Sidereal Sunset
by Magery
Summary: Raynare sighs. She is not a diplomat. She's no longer an Angel, and she doesn't want to be. The woman she has become is rude, arrogant, and free. Free to lust, free to love, and free to wear wool and linen in the same outfit. Why did she agree to do this in the first place? Oh, right. Because Azazel broke her heart, and she still couldn't stop herself from trying to impress him.
1. (Mostly) Honest Conversations

"My lord," Raynare says, "could you please repeat yourself? Because it sounded like you just ordered me to babysit a teenaged boy."

Azazel, Lord of the Grigori, and one of the most powerful entities in existence, pouts like a schoolgirl.

"I told you, Raynare, he has a Sacred Gear. If it awakens while he's still human, the results could be catastrophic."

"So what?" she asks. "One tiny, pathetic mortal kills a whole bunch of other tiny, pathetic mortals, and in another city it's Tuesday. If you want to study his Sacred Gear so badly, why not order me to seduce him and bring him here?"

Raynare shrugs, and the smooth arch of her shoulders would have brought a lesser man to his knees. Even for a Fallen Angel, she is beautiful. Azazel does not even notice. He regards his subordinates as somewhere between siblings and children, as much as some of them might wish otherwise.

"Honestly, you wouldn't even have to bother with that. Send someone like Dohnaseek to abduct him, or hire one of the human gangs to do it. That solves all our problems: it gets you your Sacred Gear, and it doesn't waste my time."

"Raynare," Azazel says, and she stiffens, because there is just the slightest hint of displeasure in his tone. He is not a violent master, nor a strict one, but Raynare fears his disappointment more than she does death itself. "You need to stop doing that. If I wanted his Sacred Gear, I would have told you. If I wanted you to seduce him, I would have made that clear. If I wanted him abducted, I would be talking to someone else."

Azazel sighs. It's little more than an expulsion of air, but it still manages to strike Raynare like a punch to the gut.

"Look," he says, not unkindly, "I know you want to impress me. I even know why. I was old before God spun you from starlight and the aether. You can no more hide your thoughts from my eyes than you can return to Heaven."

Raynare flushes, and looks away.

It is not an expression that should ever be seen on the face of a creature like her. Raynare is a Fallen Angel, a millennia-old supernatural existence once forged in the image of God Almighty. The slightest curve of her body suggests a seduction greater and more passionate than any human could imagine: and Raynare has a great many curves indeed.

She should not look like a woman on the verge of tears; a woman whose heart is the process of being torn to pieces.

Azazel reaches out, and places a hand on her shoulder. It is kind, and gentle, and not at all the way she wants him to touch her.

"I don't love you the way you want me to, Raynare. I value you as a subordinate and a person, but not as a lover. Not because you are not worthy of it, but because, well…"

He shrugs, and looks almost sheepish.

"You know why I fell, don't you?"

She does; she has simply become very good at ignoring it. When an angel is born, they are granted a purpose. It is a truth burned into their soul, the literal reason for their existence. A cosmic imperative that governs their words, their thoughts, and their deeds.

In many ways, an angel is little more than a creature of obsession.

That does not change when they fall. Even as the act of rebelling against God taints them with irredeemable sin, stains their wings black and casts them from Heaven, they do not lose their sense of purpose. It simply shifts focus.

Azazel fell for lust, and that is now what rules him. Not just for women, but for knowledge, and everything that comes along with it. He has shaped the entire progression of human society: it was the Grigori under his direction that first taught the races of men about warfare, weaponry, and magic.

It is not a secret that the fastest advances in science usually come through conflict – when there is a great and pressing need for as many breakthroughs as possible. Azazel knows this, which is why he introduced it to humanity on the broadest scale possible.

Azazel wants to know, and it is only recently, with the experience of another two or three thousand years living amongst the mortal races, that he has realised how much of a monster that has made him.

But that is not the reason he cannot love Raynare. He is a creature of pleasure beyond all else, and if Azazel thought she would please him, he would take her. Not violently, not unwillingly, but in the end, she would be his. There are very few forces on this Earth—or even below or above it—that could deny Azazel something he truly wanted.

The problem is that Raynare loves him. Azazel does not have time for love. There are too many things to learn, too many women to settle for only one. He has had a hundred harems in his lifetime—probably more, in fact—but all of those were formed entirely based on lust, and populated mostly by humans who would only be beautiful enough for a couple of decades (it is a cruel and callous truth, but a truth nonetheless).

Raynare is a Fallen Angel; she will not die except through violence, and it is not in Azazel to be faithful for eternity.

"Loving me will only ever bring you pain, Raynare," he says. His words echo through the air with the sort of certainty that only ever comes from experience. "It's not worth it."

For a moment, she looks defiant, but then the fight slips out of her like the tears sliding down her porcelain cheeks. Raynare turns to leave, to get out, get away, but Azazel's hand is still clamped on her shoulder. She can no more resist his strength than she can lift a mountain.

"I know it hurts."

Azazel's voice is gentle, and it makes her want to scream. He has never known a love like this – how can he possibly understand how she can barely breathe under the weight of her grief? How can he understand the way her limbs feel as fragile as glass, like she will shatter if she has to spend one more moment in the face of this humiliation?

"I can see it in your eyes," Azazel says softly, like she is a wild animal he does not wish to startle. "This had to happen, Raynare. You have been far too reckless lately in your attempts to gain my favour. I do not want that; not only because it endangers our Faction as a whole, but because it endangers you. All I want is the loyal, dedicated Raynare who was one of my most-trusted subordinates."

It is blatant manipulation, and in that moment she hates him for it.

"Is that all I am to you? Just another minion under your command?" Raynare is a woman scorned, and the fires of Hell would have been a welcome reprieve from the heat of her voice.

"Yes," comes the blunt reply, and Raynare flinches as if struck. "You are a Fallen Angel, a member of the Grigori, and that means you answer to me. I know it is cruel, but that is the truth."

His next words are far less harsh; they match the tone he speaks them in.

"But do not think I do not care for you. I care for all those who march beneath my banner. You are the family I have chosen to call my own, and that means more to me than you probably understand. I do not like seeing you in pain, Raynare, especially when I am the cause. It is simply that it would be far crueller to leave you be, to wait until you end up killing yourself in some fruitless attempt to impress me.

"You do not need to waste your life like that, Raynare. You impress me most when you are the woman I can trust to do what I need done. I am not telling you not to love: my sort of callousness is not in your nature. You will always love more deeply and thoroughly than I am capable of comprehending.

"Just… try and pick somebody else."

"It doesn't work like that," Raynare says. Her voice sounds like heartbreak.

"I know," is Azazel's reply, "but I have nothing else to offer you. I can't give you what you want, and my only other solution is something even Samael would have scorned."

"What is it?" Surely, Raynare thinks, surely anything would be better than having to live like this; than having to wake up in the morning and know that you Fell for nothing at all.

"I could tear out every last fragment of your love for me, raping your mind and soul in the process. If the slightest thing went wrong, you would end up somewhere between an emotionless robot and a drooling cripple. That is, of course, if you even survived the process in the first place."

Raynare's horror must have shown on her face, because Azazel is quick to speak again.

"I have learned a great many things over the course of my life. Some of them I wish I could forget."

He is lying, though Raynare will never know. Knowledge is knowledge, and Azazel will never regret obtaining it, regardless of how monstrous the applications might be. After all, a few hundred years ago, a ritual originally designed for trapping an enemy's soul in an eternity of torture turned out to be the necessary base for creating an artificial Sacred Gear.

"We both know that is not an option," Azazel says, squeezing her shoulder almost awkwardly before finally removing his hand, "so all that is left is for you to, well, get over me. Take as much time as you need; I can find someone else for this mission."

"No." Raynare's head is bowed, and her body is shaking, but her voice is terrifyingly steady. She could have been talking about the weather. "I'll do it."

When she looks up, the tremulous corners of her smile cut him like a blade.

"I might as well be good for something, right?"

This time, as she turns to leave, Azazel makes no move to stop her.

Later, when the reports filter in about Raynare's room having been utterly trashed, with parts of the floor melted to slag and fist-shaped holes punched through the wall, he simply shrugs and tells them that he'll get somebody to fix it later.

* * *

When the woman who calls herself Amano Yuuma steps through the gateway of Kuoh Academy, she can feel the wards slide across her skin. This is the heart of Gremory-Sitri alliance's territory on the mortal plane, and they would not have left it undefended even if it wasn't home to two of the Satan's little sisters.

Raynare has no illusions that they do not know she is here. Had it been anyone else calling this place home, she might have been able to fool them. She is an infiltrator, a spy, and a seductress, and that has been her chosen role for two millennia. If Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri had not been tied so closely to the Maou, she could have walked right past them and they'd never have known she was a Fallen Angel.

Raynare is very, very good at her job. There have been times where she has held deep cover for longer than the Gremory and Sitri heirs have been alive - combined. But that does not matter; not when she would be trying to sneak past barriers cast by the Leviathan herself. That is the reason she is not trying to sneak at all. This close to something so precious to entities like Sirzechs Lucifer and Serafall Leviathan, Raynare's only hope of survival is to make it very clear she is not a threat.

It is not the first time she has been forced to play that role, either.

Less than five minutes after she has signed herself in at the front office—spinning a story to the receptionist about absent, hardworking parents and how they trusted her to take care of herself—a call comes over the PA. It seems Amano Yuuma is required in the president's office. Something about easing her introduction to the school.

Raynare chuckles. It is remarkably unsubtle, but, impressive pedigree or not, she is still dealing with teenagers. They will always be impatient. And, in their defence, this close to the seat of their power, they do not have to be subtle. There are two full peerages on this campus, and only one of her. Raynare is not mighty; she does not bleed power, slipping from her skin like smoke. Not like Azazel, or even Kokabiel.

She has always been more of a lover than a fighter, and within a ward schema like this, the facts will be patently obvious: she is not dangerous. Oh, one-on-one, she could probably take any of her potential opponents. She does, after all, have literally thousands of years of experience over them.

But she does not have the strength to level a city to ash, and that is what she would need to win the fight she is trying so hard to avoid.

She makes her way through the halls, noting the—rather incompetent, really—attempts to stalk her, both by some of the Heirs' peerage members and a few obvious perverts. Including, it seems, the boy Raynare is here to supervise. Wonderful.

It is not that Raynare has any particular problem with perversion. She is, after all, a Fallen Angel, and beyond that, she was—is—in love with Azazel. She had no illusions that a blushing virgin would have anything to offer him that he had not already sampled a thousand times before. No; some of the things Raynare has done and enjoyed are not even physically possible for a human being.

But she has no interest in being appreciated, even at a distance, by stupid little boys. She is beautiful, and she knows it. Raynare is stunning even by the standards of a race that go out of their way to make sure of the fact. It is a weapon she wields better than any other. She does not need the hormonal affection of a teenager to tell her that.

Eventually, she reaches the door to the President's office, which is guarded on either side by two Devils who would look intimidating if weren't for the fact they were still in their school uniforms. They open the door as she arrives, and the boy's fingers flex, as if wrapping around the hilt of an invisible sword. Raynare ignores him entirely. She is not in the mood to be threatened by children.

Inside the office sit Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri, flanked by their respective Queens. It is an impressive display of solidarity. And strength. There is enough power in this room to level it thrice over. More than enough to kill her in such close quarters, without a sky to escape into.

Raynare slides into the only available chair with the sort of languid grace that a man once described as basically everything he wanted out of life, and throws her feet up on Sona Sitri's desk. She could not look more at ease if she was being fanned and fed grapes by a harem of nubile young men.

"So, kaichou," she asks, the curl of her lips making a mockery of the title, "was there a problem with my enrolment?"

Impressively, the girl's reaction is little more than a tightening of her expression and a twitch of her hand. Her Queen is nowhere near as restrained; or, at least, her expression makes it quite clear that if Raynare does not remove her legs, they will be removed for her.

From her body entirely, if need be.

Gremory raises an eyebrow, and the black-haired Devil to her left laughs demurely behind her fingers. It does not fool Raynare in the slightest. This is a room a hairsbreadth from violence, held back only by curiosity. They do not know what a Fallen Angel is doing so deep within their territory, and they are intelligent enough to try and figure it out before they kill her.

"What are you doing here?" Sitri asks, recovering what little of her composure she lost in the first place. It is a blunt question, but then again Sona Sitri strikes Raynare as a blunt sort of person. They're expecting her to lie: that much is obvious.

It's cute that they think they'd be able to tell. Raynare has been lying for longer than Japan has been civilised. If a bunch of teenagers—supernatural or not—could see through her so easily, she would have died a long time ago. But, as it happens, she has no need for lies. They'd just make her job harder.

"Issei Hyoudou. Second-year student at Kuoh Academy, newly enrolled this semester. Apparently a pervert, if the fact he was stalking me through the halls meant anything. I'm sure you know all about him, considering his Sacred Gear is leaking as badly as his dignity."

Raynare shrugs, a motion far too sensual for the schoolgirl whose appearance she currently wears.

"Or maybe you don't. It doesn't matter to me. I'm just here because Azazel doesn't want him going crazy and slaughtering half this city before somebody puts him down."

"And you expect us to believe that?" This time, it is Gremory who asks the question.

"If I was here to recruit him, do you think I'd bother coming to your school? Look, girl, I've been doing this since before the Dark Ages. Give me five minutes and I could have him licking my boots clean while dressed in a maid outfit and singing the Spice Girls' Greatest Hits. I actually proposed a similar idea to Azazel, but he decided against it. Now that I've seen Hyoudou myself, well, you can imagine my disappointment."

"Say we believe you," says Sitri, and Raynare almost laughs at how serious she is, "about Hyoudou, and about your orders from Azazel. I still don't see why we should let you stay, or attend our school. We are aware of his Sacred Gear, and we have been watching him. There is no reason for your Faction to interfere."

"Do you know how many years we've been at war with one another?"

Raynare sighs. She is not a diplomat. Respect and politeness can go fuck themselves; she's no longer an Angel, and she doesn't want to be. The woman she has become is rude, arrogant, and free. Free to lust, free to love, and free to wear wool and linen in the same outfit. Why did she agree to do this in the first place?

Oh, right. Because Azazel broke her heart, and she still couldn't stop herself from trying to impress him.

"Of course you do. You're the heirs of the Gremory and Sitri clans. The respective little sisters of the two most famous Satans your race has ever known. You probably bleed politics and shit intrigue. Or try to, anyway. So ask yourselves: why would Azazel send me? I am, as you say, unnecessary."

There is a bitter twist to that last word that she cannot quite manage to hide.

"Don't bother answering," she says, "because I don't actually care what you think. Azazel wants peace. It's been thousands of years since the Great War, and we're still only shadows of what we once were. We used to be great. We used to have pride.

"Even a hundred years ago, I could have walked down the street of any human city you'd care to name, and they would have dropped to their knees and venerated me like I was God Himself. Now, they'd just take my photo with their phones and ask me who I was cosplaying as. As if any character their pitiful little minds could conjure would possibly compare to me.

"Azazel sent me because we will never come to an agreement if we don't have any reason to talk in the first place. You can watch me watching Hyoudou, and see that's all I'm doing. Then you can tell your siblings about it, and maybe they'll actually listen to Azazel the next time he proposes a conference to discuss peace between the Three Factions."

Raynare is lying, of course. Azazel only ever told her to watch Hyoudou. But it has been almost a week since he rejected her, and she's had nothing better to do over that time than think. She knows Azazel dreams of a world without violence. If she's honest, it's a dream she shares. Raynare likes being alive, and it's hard to stay that way if any minor conflict can potentially boil over into a full-scale war.

If the Three Factions ever fought one another again, Raynare would probably be one of the first to die. Her strongest light-spear can destroy half a wall; Azazel's would do the same to half a continent, and he is far weaker than some of the monsters that exist in this world.

It's not like she's planning it just for his attention. It's enlightened self-interest, really; war is always worst for the footsoldiers, and even if Raynare can fly, she still qualifies. The collateral damage from a no holds barred fight between beings on the level of Azazel and Kokabiel can annihilate armies; it happened before, in the War.

Raynare has hated God for a very long time, but she is still thankful that He decided her talents were best used as long-range artillery instead of for wing-to-wing combat. She would not have survived the chaos otherwise.

"That is an… interesting proposal," Sitri says, "but we will need some time to consider it. We will deliver our decision tomorrow; for now you may attend class. Do not approach Hyoudou - we will know."

Raynare shrugs easily, her acceptance a nonchalant thing. I obey because I feel like it, the motion says, not because you control me. By the tightening of the Sitri's Queen's fingers, the message is received loud and clear. Gremory and her Queen are far more boring by comparison - they seem mostly amused by her behaviour.

A pity, but Raynare will crack them eventually. She always does.

She slips her feet off the desk and stands.

"Thank you for your time, kaichou," Raynare says with a jaunty wave. She speaks with all the gushing giddiness of a schoolgirl meeting one of her idols. "I'll see you tomorrow!"

That got a reaction out of Gremory: another raised eyebrow. Has she never heard of acting? Sure, even disguised as a teenager, Raynare looks like somebody crossed sex kitten with Gabriel's slutty sister (as demeaning as the descriptions might be). It's not like Gremory—or Heaven forbid, her Queen—can talk. They're lucky they're Devils, or else they'd be needing a chiropractor by the time they turned twenty.

But if they think that means Raynare doesn't know how to be a teenager, well, they've got another thing coming. And not in the way Hyoudou would probably dream of.

She opens the door, ignoring the guards on the way out the same way she ignored them on the way in. Just before she's fully out of the room, Sitri calls out to her.

"Amano-san," the girl says, completely serious, "don't forget to pick up your schedule from the reception; I believe your first class is mathematics in Room 4-A. And remember: Kuoh Academy will not tolerate slackers. Education is important, and I will see no student, however temporary, waste theirs!"

Raynare is lucky she's moved far enough past the guards by the time Sitri finishes speaking that they can't see her face, because she is utterly nonplussed. And a little bit furious. For God's sake, she's older than the stones that make up this building. She needs an education as much as she needs a colonoscopy. Probably less.

Who does Sitri think she is?

...the little sister of Serafall Leviathan, She Who Froze The World, a literal Satan, and a woman so overprotective only a madman would think of speaking to Sitri without permission, most likely. Raynare has to remember that. She is walking a tightrope above quicksand and lava, except the tightrope is spiked. And on fire.

One wrong move, and she will be so thoroughly murdered that even her memory will no longer remain.

She collects her schedule from the office, noting absently that it doubles as a contract circle under the right circumstances—now that's clever—and makes her way to her first class. As Sitri said, it is mathematics, and unfortunately it seems she shares it with Hyoudou. She inhales, tasting the scent of his magic. It smells like fire and war.

It smells like a dragon.

...well, shit. Now she fully understands why Azazel wanted her to keep an eye on him, and why he hadn't wanted her to bring him in. Sure, Twice Critical is a dime a dozen, but putting him and Vali in the same room would not end well for anyone. Well, except possibly Vali, the battle-hungry maniac.

Raynare introduces herself to the class as, "Amano Yuuma-san, please take care of me," and sits down. In a seat at the back of the classroom, right next to a window.

Now she regrets ever humouring Kalawarner and watching some of those cartoons—she can hear the woman's voice in her head right now, telling her they were anime, not cartoons, you uncultured swine—she so favoured. Because here Raynare is, the relatively mysterious transfer student sitting in the back of the classroom, and gazing out the window because the class didn't interest her at all.

God damnit, she refuses to be a stereotype!

The class passes relatively slowly; it's trigonometry, and Raynare can do it in her sleep. Human magic revolves around geometry - you can't draw a good ritual circle or pentagram without understanding far more than just angles. Raynare has seduced a great many human magicians for the Grigori's cause, and she's found the simplest way to get their attention is to pretend to be interested.

She gets called to the board once, to show her understanding of a concept. She solves the problem using principles they haven't even learned yet, just to show off, and returns to her seat to dumbfounded silence. That is the way it should be. Amano Yuuma is a pathetic shadow of Raynare of the Grigori, but they should still regard her with awe. She is far more worthy than they will ever be.

"So smart and so hot!" she overhears—as do half the class, given how loud he is—one of Hyoudo's fellow perverts exclaim. "Does kaichou have competition?"

"Kaichou has no competition," snaps back the third, "and she never will!"

They descend into an argument over whether she, Raynare, is more attractive than Sitri. It's funny, in a sad sort of way. Yes, Sitri is beautiful, very much so - especially if you're into the strict, domineering type. But she couldn't seduce herself out of the Second Circle of Hell (and not only because the Leviathan wouldn't let her). That's what they don't get, these children. They'd drool over Sitri in a swimsuit, but there are women out there who could get the same reaction with little more than a smile.

The class ends, eventually, and so does every one that comes after. All of them are ludicrously simple; Raynare has lived the history they learn, watched as the languages they speak evolved over millennia, and had she any interest, she could qualify to teach the sciences at any university they'd care to name. Azazel is a scientist, and she has spent a significant proportion of her life trying to impress him.

One of the first things she did was make sure she could keep up with his tangents about how spiritual resonance was similar to quantum entanglement, and how he thanked the Lord for the correspondence. Raynare is nowhere near his level of brilliance, and she has never been any good at inventing, but she's acted as a sounding board almost more times than she can remember.

There is a reason she was Azazel's first choice for this assignment, even when she is nowhere near his mightiest tool; even when he had called her out on her erraticism just minutes after explaining what he wanted her to do. When Raynare sets her mind to something, she does it well. She will succeed, or die trying. Her determination—some people might call it simple bloody-minded stubbornness, but some people are idiots—is her single greatest strength. And her greatest flaw... if she had any.

But she doesn't. Obviously.

When she finally leaves the school, five people have already asked her out. Five people have also been brutally shut down so thoroughly they will probably not confess to another person for years. Yes, Raynare is trying to be good. To do good. But she is not nice. Especially not to some mewling mortal whose nation is younger than her hairstyle.

It would be exceedingly strange for the girl who calls herself Amano Yuuma to make her way to an abandoned church right after school (or at all, really). So she doesn't. Instead, she visits the mall, browsing with no intention of actually buying, and disappears into a restroom.

A couple of minutes later, Raynare emerges. She is taller, older, and even more beautiful than before. She could pass for Amano Yuuma's older cousin, if she had to, but the resemblance is not particularly obvious beyond the colour of their hair. Illusion has always been Raynare's greatest talent; she is above all things a creature of deception.

Her wings—as demeaning as it might be—are still veiled from sight, but now there is no mistaking that she is something beyond human norms. Gone is her school uniform and accompanying mien - she strides through the crowds like a panther, all arrogant strut and lithe danger. Know your place, her walk says. You are beneath me.

Eventually, she arrives at the church, and slips past the threshold with a tingle in her veins. God has no real influence here, not in an abandoned church in the middle of Devil territory, but even the memory of his presence has strength. And Raynare is still an angel - Fallen or not, she was forged from Light, and it can never abandon her completely.

When the doors close behind her, Raynare unfolds her wings with an almost-carnal sigh of satisfaction. It hurts to keep them concealed.

"How was your day at school, dear?" Mittelt calls out from her place lounging amongst the pews; her smile is as mocking as her voice. "Did you meet any cute boys?"

"I saw a few you might like," Raynare replies. "Though most were out of their diapers, so probably a bit old for you, eh?"

"Why you," her compatriot growls out, clenching her fists. Raynare honestly doesn't know why she tries. Mittelt has never been able to match words with her, and angers far too easily. They have an interesting relationship; they snip and snipe at one another almost constantly, but Raynare has saved Mittelt's life almost as many times as Mittelt has saved hers.

That doesn't mean they like one another, deep down. This isn't one of Kalawarner's shows, where they'll profess their undying friendship when their backs are against the wall and they're halfway to dying. Mittelt thinks Raynare is an obnoxious, stuck-up bitch. Raynare thinks Mittelt is, well, an obnoxious, stuck-up bitch. They are far too alike to ever get on, especially when Raynare has Azazel's favour and Mittelt does not.

But they do respect one another, and when you've lived as long as they have, that's enough.

"Where's Dohnaseek?" she asks, and Mittelt shrugs. Typical. The man is as shady as his fashion sense, and about as reliable as her laptop's battery life. But he's the best of them by far at blending into human society, and has so many underworld—not Underworld—connections he could write a phonebook and still have some left over.

Raynare descends the stairs - lo and behold, Kalawarner is watching something on the television she's plugged her laptop into. The woman is the only person here she's actually friends with, but Raynare knows better than to interrupt her at the moment. It'd only piss her off; Kalawarner holds grudges better than anyone she's ever met, and over the most trivial of things.

With nothing else to do, Raynare strips off and collapses onto her bed. She ate at the mall, and keeping up the pretense of being an ordinary, harmless schoolgirl was, if not mentally exhausting, then at least mentally boring. All she wants to do now is sleep.

Tomorrow she'll find out whether or not her gambit has succeeded.

* * *

 **So.**

 **This is a thing.**

 **Everyone loves Raynare, right? Or maybe that's just me.**

 **Anyway, I suppose I'd best make a few things clear. The first is that, if it wasn't already obvious, this is an AU. I'd say it was an AU in multiple ways, but really everything diverges from a single fact. In this universe, being hundreds or thousands of years old _means something_. That includes Azazel noticing something is off with one of his servants and deciding to do something about it. And a bunch of other things that aren't obvious yet. **

**The second is that if anyone is concerned by some of Raynare's thoughts, no, I will not be bashing any of the cast. Bashing is dumb. Don't do it. What I _will_ be doing is trying to write my characters as faithfully possible, and that means Raynare is arrogant and looks down on people. Even if she shouldn't. _Especially_ when she shouldn't. **

**(Seriously, Raynare is so easy to write for. She's arrogant with an inferiority complex. I might as well be writing myself).**

 **There's probably something else I'm missing, but if I get any reviews it'll probably crop up then. We'll see!**


	2. (Not So) Chance Encounters

"So," Rias asks, "what do you think we should do, Sona-chan?"

It is a good question. The most important question, really. Sona Sitri will never admit it, but the Fallen Angel who called herself Yuuma Amano—well, Amano Yuuma, if she was using Japanese conventions of language—has rattled her. She is not used to negotiating with those who aren't Devils; with those in whom her name engenders fear, but not respect.

Sona is not stupid. In all honesty, she is probably one of the most intelligent people in any room she decides to enter - regardless of who else might be there at the time. She _knows_ exactly what being the Leviathan's sister means, what it affords her, and she abuses it whenever she can. She is a Devil, after all.

Oh, she might want to stand on her own two feet. She might want to be known for something more than just who she's related to. That is why she is here, in Kuoh Academy, instead of back in the Underworld. Hell knows she gets sick of being kowtowed to by Devils ten times her age and strength, simply because they want to curry favour with the Maou. She wants them to respect her for _her_.

It's one of the reasons she and Rias get along so well, because if there is one thing in this world Rias understands, it's what it's like to be related to a Satan - and what it feels like to want nothing more than to stand out from their shadow.

But, as she said before, she is a Devil. Hers is a heritage of hellfire and damnation, of perversion and sin so foul that it disgusts even the Fallen. Sona will not refuse a weapon and shield both just because she finds it distasteful - not when it comes to negotiation.

There is a saying amongst the Factions: _Angels prefer war to politics_.

It should go unsaid what that implies about the latter.

How is that relevant to the point at hand? All of Sona's experience in the area is with people who are aware that if they offend her too badly or treat her too unfairly, Serafall Leviathan _will know_. Well, that, or humans, but they don't really count. Not when Sona can cow most with little more than a glare.

She has never had to consider a proposal that might as well come from Azazel himself, tabled by the hand of what must be one of his most trusted servants. Nor one that has such potentially species-spanning ramifications. It is not something Sona—or Rias—can afford to refuse, either. If they do, it's not just Sona Sitri and Rias Gremory, resident Devil Kings of Kuoh Academy, denying a Fallen Angel access to their territory.

No - it's Sona Sitri and Rias Gremory, sisters to Leviathan and Lucifer, spurning the prelude to a peace offer from the head of the Grigori himself. There are some people who would consider it a declaration of war, if they ever found out.

Sona has considered that the Fallen was lying. She has considered that this is nothing more than a trick, and the woman is here for some other nefarious purpose. There was never a hint of deception on her face, but there wouldn't have been. Sona is young, but she is, again, not stupid - she doesn't expect to catch anyone over the age of a hundred in falsehood, let alone a Fallen who could be anywhere up to and including older than the Earth.

The problem with living in a society populated by immortals is that Sona's youth is by far her biggest disadvantage. She is eighteen. In the human world, she'd be in the prime of her life. In the Underworld, the only thing noteworthy about her capabilities and skills is that they are unusually great for someone _her age_. Sona has been playing chess since she was three; there are Devils who started playing when the game was invented.

The first thing every Devil is taught is to respect their elders. This is not just a societal convention designed out of respect or politeness - it is a safety measure. The more they learn to be wary of what difference a couple of centuries in experience can mean, the less likely they are to blunder overconfidently into a fight with an Angel—Fallen or not—and be swatted like a fly before they have enough strength under their belt to be a challenge.

That is not to say that winning that fight is impossible. It doesn't matter if your enemy can beat you in a swordfight blindfolded and using their toes, for example, if their blade shatters on your skin. Raw power is the greatest equaliser; there's a reason the Evil Piece system is based around it, after all, and why the Longinus-class Sacred Gears are so prized.

But with age comes more than just strength. With it comes _versatility_. It is an obvious truth that a Devil who's been around for a hundred years would have more skills under their belt than one who's been around for twenty. What, then, does that imply about a Devil who is a _thousand_ years old?

So no, Sona did not expect to catch Yuuma Amano in a lie. That doesn't mean she couldn't have been telling them. The problem is that neither Sona nor Rias can take the chance that she was bluffing. They can't afford to risk the fact she might have been telling the truth. It is a ploy worthy of Azazel, a man who Sona is uncomfortably aware is one of the few assuredly _more_ intelligent than she is. At best, they might be able to tell Yuuma that they won't trust anything less than the word of Azazel himself, but how would they get it?

Even if the lack of basic trust doesn't cripple the potential alliance before it begins, Azazel can't exactly turn up at their doorstep, for more reasons than Sona has fingers to count them off with. First and foremost being that the Lord of the Grigori coming _anywhere near_ the sisters of two Maou would be the worst idea since Sona herself had accidentally given Serafall the desire to make her own television show.

She still has nightmares about that day.

And then, of course, any other way of hearing him speak can be faked with magic. Sona, Rias, and Akeno are the three best sorcerers in Kuoh, and Sona's picked up plenty of tricks from her sister. But none of them are overly familiar with the way Fallen use their powers outside of combat; Sona doesn't even know how Yuuma is disguising herself as a human. It could be an illusion, it could be shapeshifting, it could be something else entirely.

So how would they be able to tell that a spell used to contact Azazel was really that, and not an illusion of its own? Or that his voice on a phone wasn't being modified or faked entirely?

It all comes back to this. If Yuuma is telling the truth, they can't say no. If Yuuma is lying, they have no way of knowing - and what if she _isn't?_

The decision is obvious, which is why Sona has spent so long considering it. Taking anything at face value when it comes to the Fallen is pure stupidity, and doubly so when it seems you have no other choice. Angels are physiologically incapable of lying, and most of them refuse to deceive through half-truths and misleading implications either.

Fallen Angels, on the other hand?

Well. It's in the name, you see.

Rias coughs to draw her attention. It is demure, ladylike, and still manages to be fondly exasperated. Sona has no idea how she does it.

"Sona-chan?" Rias asks. "You've been silent for a while."

Oh. Right. Rias asked her a question, didn't she?

"Sorry, Rias," Sona says. Japanese is neither of their first languages, even if they speak it fluently through the gift of tongues, and Sona is no otaku (or weeaboo, for that matter). She uses honorifics in public, and nowhere else. "I was thinking."

"So I noticed," Rias replies wryly. "I imagine you've come to the same conclusion I have."

"That we trust this 'Yuuma' as far as I do my sister's sense of restraint, but have to accept the offer anyway?"

Rias laughs. It is a beautiful thing. _Rias_ is a beautiful thing. Sona is well aware of her own appeal, but Rias just isn't fair. If Sona is one of the smartest people in any room she chooses to enter, Rias will always be one of the most stunning.

"Something along those lines. We'll pass on the message tomorrow, like you said; I'll set Akeno to watching her while she's here. I'm sure they'll get along famously."

Sona smiles. "She _was_ a little abrasive, wasn't she? Maou, I can see it now. A millenia-old Fallen Angel getting ara ara'd like an unruly kohai."

They burst into laughter; whether it's at the mental image, her phrasing, or just to relieve the tension of the situation, Sona's not sure. It's not like it matters. A world that needs a reason for joy is not somewhere she's interested in living.

* * *

The next morning, Raynare isn't sure what wakes her up. Is it the Light tingling beneath her skin as it answers the call of sunrise? Is it the cacophony coming from beyond the door as Kalawarner—presumably—tries to cook?

Or is it, perhaps, Serafall Leviathan smiling at her from the end of her bed?

...yeah, it's probably that last one.

"Good morning, Fallen Angel-chan!" Serafall says, as bright and bubbly as champagne. "Magical Girl Levia-tan says hello!"

Raynare freezes. Not literally, thank God, though it's a relevant fear given who she's talking to. But her whole body stills, and her heart skips a beat. The Leviathan is not any more overwhelmingly powerful than Azazel; there's nothing about the way her very presence bends the room toward her that Raynare hasn't seen before.

But Azazel is her lord. The man she loves. The only thing about him she fears is his disappointment.

Serafall, on the other hand?

Raynare saw her fight, once, in the War. She looked the same then as she does now; an illogically well-developed child. Compared to her opponents, three ten-winged warrior-savants from Michael's own legion, she could have been mistaken for the punchline to a joke. And not a particularly witty one, either.

Raynare can still remember the way they screamed.

"Well," Serafall says, pouting with her hands on her hips, "aren't you going to greet me? And after I came all this way just to visit you!"

"Sorry," Raynare replies, finally finding her voice. "I was too busy wondering why I'm still alive."

"Oh, don't be like that, Fallen Angel-chan! You'll make me think I'm scary!"

Raynare gives her a look that, translated into English, would say something on the lines of _no shit, Sherlock_.

Sure, it's not the best idea to be snarking at a woman who could literally kill her by glaring hard enough, but Raynare is off-balance, still in the process of waking up, and, well, _Raynare_. She doesn't have it in her to be particularly polite even on pain of death (which is a potentially more literal statement in this instance than most others).

"Fine, fine, I'll get to the point," Serafall says, waving a hand almost dismissively at her. There's a wand—a genuine fucking _magic wand_ —in that hand. It wasn't there before. Raynare did not see, hear, nor feel it being summoned from where she sits, less than two metres away. "I noticed you poking around at my beautiful, precious sister's school, and as the Satan in charge of foreign affairs, I thought I'd drop by for a chat!"

The two statements are technically true. _Technically._ But if the Leviathan is here on business, Raynare is the Great Red. She knew this would happen eventually; there's no way the two Maou who are almost as famous for their sibling complexes as they are for their power would let anyone pass unnoticed near the aforementioned siblings. But she hadn't expected it to happen the _very next day._

Which is probably the exact reason Serafall is here, now that she thinks about it. Raynare isn't used to being outmaneuvered. It's a feeling she could do without.

"So," she asks, "is this the part where you threaten to murder me so terribly that the story of my death will still send shivers down the spines of men a thousand years from now, just in case I was thinking of laying a single finger on Sitri? Or where you tell me that the Lucifer has prepared an Evil Piece just for me, so he can bring me back afterward in order to do the same if I dare to look at _his_ sister for too long?"

"Of course not - you've done a much better job of it for me than I would have!" The threat in Serafall's words is utterly incongruous with the beaming smile on her face. "No, Fallen Angel-chan, I'm just here to let you know we'll be watching you. I'm sure you already knew, but it'd have been rude just to assume, y'know?"

 _Yes,_ Raynare thinks dryly, _I'm sure you were simply concerned with being polite._

"Thank you for your consideration," she says instead. "I appreciate it, I really do."

Serafall giggles. It seems Raynare has judged her correctly; nothing Raynare can say will genuinely offend her, no matter how rude or sarcastic it might be, because the woman just doesn't care. Raynare is nothing to her - why would she feel insulted by the behaviour of an ant?

"Now, if you'll excuse me," Raynare says, rising from the bed, "I need to get ready for school. I don't think your sister approves of tardiness all that much."

As she approaches the door to her room, the one that leads out into the communal space beneath the church, Serafall calls out to her.

"Um, Fallen Angel-chan," the Leviathan says, almost bashfully, "you might want to get dressed first."

Raynare looks down. Pale, flawless skin, breasts the size of melons, and a stomach even flatter than Mittelt. Hips sharp enough to kill a man; legs long enough to make him want it.

And not a stitch of clothing to be found.

She has just _flashed the Leviathan_.

For the first time in fifty-three years, Raynare blushes. There is more red on her face than there was in the whole of Communist Russia.

* * *

A little later, a girl who looks like Amano Yuuma opens her bedroom door—this time fully dressed—and steps out into what amounts to the living room. Mittelt and Kalawarner are both sitting down at a table, chatting amiably, and Dohnaseek is once again nowhere to be found.

"Hey, Raynare," Kalawarner says, waving a hand toward the kitchen. "Food's in there if you're hungry."

"Thanks," Raynare says, and means it. She wasn't lying when she said she was actually friends with Kalawarner. They share a lot of interests, even if anime isn't one of them, and they were part of the same legion in Heaven. Sure, Kalawarner is older than Raynare by a few hundred years, but once you've crossed your third millennia, even a century isn't a particularly meaningful measure of time.

She goes to collect a plate of… she's pretty sure it's some sort of bread and cheese, and if Mittelt is eating it then it must _taste_ nice—the woman's a stickler for quality—even if it doesn't look it. No, Raynare isn't sure how Kalawarner managed to screw up something that _doesn't even require cooking_. It's one of God's miracles.

Returning to the table, she slides into the seat next to Kalwarner and starts eating. A seat that is conspicuously as far away from Mittelt as possible. The two of them have long since perfected the art of living together; it involves avoiding one another whenever they can. The amusing part is that Kalawarner is actually friends with _both_ of them - she is so very often the buffer that stops them from coming to blows.

Raynare is not afraid of Mittelt. Neither of them specialise in fighting—unlike Kalawarner—but Raynare would trounce her in single combat, and they both know it. The thing is, they don't have any particular _desire_ to engage in the supernatural equivalent of fisticuffs; they just don't want to be the one who backs down first.

Hence why they are so thankful to Kalawarner and her seemingly infinite patience when it comes to defusing their arguments.

"So, what's on the schedule today?" Kalawarner asks.

"I'll go to Kuoh, be terribly surprised to find out they've accepted my offer, and then spend the rest of the day wishing I wasn't there."

Kalawarner and Mittelt both know of Raynare's plan. So does Dohnaseek, for that matter. She trusts them enough—yes, even Dohnaseek—to believe they won't betray her. Not that there's really much to betray; if there are any factions within the Grigori who actually _want_ open war, they're keeping themselves well hidden.

"The two of you might want to go over the wards again, by the way. I woke up to find the Leviathan on the end of my bed."

Raynare takes pleasure in their dumbfounded expressions. It's always nice to startle an immortal, even if she is one herself. _Especially_ given she's one herself, since she knows exactly how hard it is to do.

"And you're _still alive?_ " Mittelt exclaims.

"What can I say," Raynare replies, "I'm naturally charming like that."

Mittelt scoffs, but doesn't say anything further.

"You can't really have expected them—the wards, that is—to keep a monster like her out, Raynare. We'd need Azazel's help if we wanted to craft something capable of that."

Kalawarner makes a good point, but it's not one Raynare hasn't thought of.

"Oh, I know." Raynare shrugs. "But better safe than sorry, eh? She might have slipped past them, but she might have torn them straight open too. I haven't had time to look. Either way, it's worth checking out. We have more enemies than just Devils."

Kalwarner nods, as does Mittelt.

Raynare glances up at the clock in the corner. Looks like it's time to go. Finishing the last bite of her breakfast (it turned out the cheese was actually some sort of cake, apparently), she bids Kalawarner farewell and leaves the room.

"Remember," Mittelt calls out after her, "three times three is nine!"

Raynare's response is a particular phrase from a long-dead language so impressively vile it was once declared a heresy against God. There is no direct translation for what it means; the closest would be something like _please fellate the excrement of the cow that is also your mother and sister._

Against someone like Raynare, or Kalawarner, the insult is meaningless; they were once Angels, and they have only ever had a Father. But Mittelt was born, not made. She is the progeny of a union between two other Fallen, shortly after the War ended. She _has_ a mother. And a sister, for that matter.

Which is exactly why Raynare chose it.

It says a lot about who she is as a person that she considers an insult that offensive an appropriate response for being reminded of the fact that she once screwed up a ward schema because she forgot her three times tables - after working on it for thirty-eight hours straight. It says a lot about _Mittelt_ as a person that she still brings up the fact seven centuries after it happened.

The door closes behind her to Mittelt's incoherent shriek of rage.

Time passes, and Raynare arrives for her second day at Kuoh Academy. She's early, but there are already plenty of students milling around. Of far more interest is the fact there's a ward that wasn't there before; she feels it spark against the Light within her as she passes through the school's front gate. It doesn't seem to be malicious - all it does is give Raynare the distinct sensation that she's being watched.

Well, maybe these teenagers aren't quite as foolish as she thought they were. She can't see the Leviathan casting something so obvious, not when she's already visited Raynare personally. So they want to be informed of her—or at least any Fallen Angel's—comings and goings, eh?

She shrugs, partly out of ambivalence, and partly to settle her backpack more comfortably on her shoulders. It's pressing down on where her wings are hidden beneath her skin, and she'd rather it didn't. Raynare does not _enjoy_ hiding what she is; her wings are a sign of her grace, her glory, and it is physically painful to conceal them.

Making her way through Kuoh's halls, she notes that she is yet to see a single Devil. It's passingly strange; she expected for them to pull her in as soon as she arrived. That they haven't is… unusual, to say the least. What game are they trying to play?

The answer becomes clear when she turns a corner and is almost surprised by the girl she'd identified as Gremory's Queen the day before. Her stealth is impressive, but she is quite literally a thousand years too early to get one by Raynare. There's something odd about her presence, though; it feels more familiar to Raynare than it should.

It's like Raynare's met her many times before, somewhere, and it doesn't make any sense.

"Yes?" the woman who is pretending to be Amano Yuuma says.

"Ara ara, I should have expected such impoliteness from such an ill-reputable girl," Gremory's Queen replies. Each word is chosen as carefully as an assassin's dagger. "As you are new to this academy, it is my duty as your senpai to familiarise you with its halls. I am Himejima Akeno, and you will be in my care."

Raynare gets the message; it's hard not to, given how obvious it is. While she is within Kuoh, she will be supervised. So be it. For once, she has no plans beyond what she's already expressed to Gremory and Sitri, and so she has nothing to fear from their attention. Himejima is as acerbic as she is dignified, and her raw power eclipses Raynare's own, but compared to the Leviathan?

Well. To say she doesn't even register is somewhat of an understatement.

"Sure," she says. "Where shall we go to first?"

Of all the places she expected, it wasn't the sports grounds. Or, next, the nurse's office. Or, in fact, the various classrooms Himejima 'expected she might need to know' after that. She had assumed that Himejima had just been providing an excuse, given more than a few students had been staring at the two of them, not been actually serious.

Admittedly, most of the stares had been directed at Himejima, not Raynare, but that is obviously because she looks like Amano Yuuma, not herself. Himejima is beautiful, and at a glance probably the most well-endowed woman Raynare has ever met. But it's unlikely she has any idea how to _use it_. If Raynare had decided to try, there's no way it could be a contest.

"Okay," she says, after being led to the home economics department, of all things. "This has been fun and all, but I don't like you, and you sure as Heaven don't like me. Both of us have better things to be doing right now, so why don't we skip the runaround and get to the point? It's not like I don't know what Sitri and Gremory's answer is going to be."

Raynare has never been particularly good at patience. Not in the short term, anyway. She can wait a hundred years for an opportunity to avenge a slight, but even fifteen minutes in line for a movie? Perish the thought.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," Himejima says, cocking her head to the side. She is the very picture of bafflement. "Rias-chan is my very good friend, but are you perhaps mispronouncing 'Shitori' as 'Sitri'? As expected of such a vulgar person."

 _...are you_ _serious?_ She had figured Himejima had some sort of bias against the Fallen even in their first meeting; she looked at Raynare the way most Angels did. Like if she was something they'd stepped in, they'd burn the shoe rather than wear it again. It just hadn't seemed important at the time.

"Look, girl," Raynare says. Her tone is utterly conversational. "I imagine you find this game entertaining, and that's fine. Heaven knows I enjoy screwing around with people. You have no reason important enough to you to stop, and I can't force you, not in the very halls of your power.

"But if you think that means you can fuck around with me without consequences, more fool you."

For a moment, Raynare considers telling Himejima exactly what's going through her mind. Himejima's a popular one at this school; just from their tour around the campus, Raynare can see she has lots of friends, and plenty of admirers. She's pretty enough, and no doubt she pretends to be kind. It probably draws them in like flies.

Raynare could _destroy_ her. She could turn this school against Himejima in a week; make them spit at her as she walks past, and then shame her into cleaning it up. She's a teenaged girl who probably gets most of what she wants in life with little more than a wink and a smile. Raynare has been corrupting the minds of men for longer than the language Himejima uses to insult her has existed.

But she shouldn't. She's purporting to be Azazel's ambassador. Threatening Gremory's Queen is not something that makes any sense for her to do - it'd be completely reasonable for Gremory to demand her removal, and then this whole scheme would come crashing down around her head. Himejima's insults are annoying, and the way she looks at Raynare cuts deeper than she's willing to admit, but compared to the risk of failing her mission and the embarrassment of being caught in a fraud by _children?_

That doesn't mean Raynare has any desire to let this stupid little play continue. But what can she do?

Oh. How obvious. Raynare can't threaten Himejima into submission because she's meant to be Azazel's ambassador - but that means Himejima is treating her, _as Azazel's ambassador_ , in a way that is completely inappropriate. Why, if Raynare had been genuine, she'd be well within her rights to complain.

If she's not allowed to eviscerate the girl—metaphorically speaking—then she might as well use her 'status' as the battering ram that cows Himejima into submission instead.

"Right now, I'm the closest thing Azazel has to an ambassador between our people," Raynare says. "What do you think happens when I go back to him and start talking about the way I've been treated by Gremory's Queen - or would that be better phrased as the most trusted servant of the Lucifer's little sister?"

She shrugs. The motion is as beautiful as she is.

"Sure, it's an inelegant solution. But you probably think I'm an 'inelegant person', or whatever ladylike bullshit you want to hide your insults behind. Honestly, though, I'm surprised you had the balls to try this in the first place. Didn't your parents ever teach you to respect your elders?"

 _That_ gets a reaction. Himejima's eyes flash—literally, with little sparks of lightning too fast for a human to register—and Raynare grudgingly admires the control that prevents the all-consuming rage in her gaze from showing anywhere else on her face. _Looks like I touched a nerve._

Now why was that lightning thing so familiar?

"Very well then," Himejima says with a sort of iciness that could give the Leviathan a run for her money, "come with me."

Himejima leads her straight through the academy and back to the student council's room. There are no guards on the door, not this time; perhaps because she's not supposed to be there, not if the flicker of surprise on Sitri's face is any indication.

"Akeno?" Sitri asks. "Why have you brought Yuuma here?"

"Her presence has become too offensive for my delicate sensibilities," Himejima says, straight-faced. "I feel I need some time to recuperate."

Sitri blinks.

"I leave her in your capable hands, kaichou. Perhaps she will learn dignity from your example."

With that, Himejima leaves. The way she walks away is not the most haughtily graceful thing Raynare has seen - but it is, admittedly, close.

"You really aren't a diplomat, are you?" Sitri asks when the door closes. "I cannot imagine what you said to infuriate Akeno that much."

"I'm not here to be diplomatic," Raynare replies. "I'm here to do my job. The diplomats come later. Hopefully I'll be long gone by then."

Raynare may be Fallen, but she was once an Angel. She has never been particularly fond of politics, even when she has to play it. _Especially_ when she has to play it.

"As for Himejima, I thought it would be obvious. She tried to screw with me. I screwed with her back. I guess she just can't take what she dishes out."

"I'm sure that's the whole story," Sitri says drily. "Make no mistake, 'Yuuma'. I don't like the Fallen, and I don't particularly like you. While you are in my territory, I would prefer that you behave yourself. So would Rias. We may not be able to reject your presence out of hand, but our patience is not infinite."

"Sure," Raynare says, "but I'm not going to sit back and take it like a virginal whore just because Himejima has a grudge. Not unless she pays me, anyway."

She smirks at the scandalised expression on Sitri's face. Prudes. So easy.

"Anyway, may I assume that in your most gracious and benevolent wisdom, you have decided that I can stick around to supervise Hyoudou?"

"Yes," Sitri says, "though if it wasn't already clear, we _will_ be watching you."

"Oh, really? I hadn't noticed."

Raynare gets the impression that the only reason Sitri isn't rolling her eyes is she doesn't want to give her the satisfaction. These Devils have been well-trained; Gremory was like a stone wall through most of their negotiations, Himejima didn't once let her fury show beyond her eyes, and now Sitri is holding Raynare off through some of the finest form she's been in for a while.

That doesn't mean she can't read them anyway—which kind of ruins Sitri's accomplishment, really—but it is more than she'd been expecting. Then again, given who Gremory and Sitri are related to (and Himejima's closeness to the former), maybe it's not so surprising. There is a difference between these three and most other teenagers, even beyond their species, and it shows.

"Well, whatever," Raynare says into the silence, waving a hand, "I guess I'll be off then. So nice to chat to you, kaichou - we should do this more often."

"Goodbye, Yuuma."

 _Ouch._ To be shut down so cruelly - Raynare is almost insulted, and she'd been joking from the start.

Raynare turns and leaves the room, slipping through Kuoh's halls and to her classroom. She resists the urge to stalk around the way she would in her natural form; she is Amano Yuuma at the moment, and that is not something Amano Yuuma would do. No - Amano Yuuma is a sweet girl, remarkably intelligent and astoundingly beautiful. She does not act like she owns whatever she steps foot upon.

 _Raynare_ does, but that is neither here nor there.

There's not much supervising she has to do of Hyoudou in the classroom; there's more than one Devil in the class, so there's plenty of supernatural support in the event his Sacred Gear spontaneously activates, and that's an unlikely prospect to begin with. Most of the time they take weeks or months to start manifesting fully, barring drastic circumstances.

Instead, she spends most of her time wondering how best to go about her duties once the school is dismissed for the day. She can follow him fairly easily if he goes to the mall, or whatever it is teenaged perverts do after class, but what about when he gets home? Raynare doesn't _really_ want to guard him while he sleeps, but she might have to.

At least she'd be able to organise it in shifts, and it's not like the Fallen need anywhere near as much rest as their mortal inferiors. Sleep is a luxury, not a requirement; why would God have programed such an obvious weakness into his soldiers?

Classes pass relatively quickly, this time, lost in a haze of strategising. Raynare is thankful for her skill at illusions; it is relatively simple to misdirect the teacher's attention and make it look like she is always paying attention. With the added bonus of infuriating her fellow supernatural students, who can tell what she was doing but have no way of replicating it _or_ pointing out what she is doing.

Apparently, she was right about his hobbies; Hyoudou visits the mall with his friends, electing to spend time in a bookstore. Three guesses what Raynare overhears he's there for, and the first two don't count. His dedication is… noteworthy, in a particular sense of the phrase.

Eventually, he decides to leave, bidding goodbye to his fellow perverts. Raynare escorts him through the streets from afar, looking nothing like herself—or Amano Yuuma, for that matter—until he arrives home.

She decides he'll be safe enough for one night, and returns to the abandoned church in the same guise she adopted going there the day before. There are many things more suspicious than one beautiful woman making a habit of walking to a particular place, and chief amongst them is a whole series of strangers doing the exact same thing.

When she arrives, it is to the murmur of conversation through the doors.

"Dohnaseek?" she asks the moment she clears the threshold, and identifies the source. "Where have you been? Please tell me you haven't been sneaking away to see Leliel again."

Leliel, as it happens, is Dohnaseek's wife.

Yes, he is married.

No, Raynare has no idea how.

(In his defense, neither does he).

"Not this time," Dohnaseek says without an ounce of shame. "I was out preparing for Asia Argento's arrival."

Oh, right. She's so used to him disappearing on her when his presence isn't absolutely required that sometimes she forgets when she actually sends him to do something.

Asia Argento is a nun, kicked out of the Church for healing a Devil with her Sacred Gear. Ordinarily, Raynare wouldn't care, but the fact Argento's power works on Devils means it's not restricted to only humans, unlike most other healing-type Sacred Gears. _That_ is worthy of her interest, because the ability to heal is perhaps the single greatest loss an Angel experiences when they Fall.

Angels are blessed with God's grace. His glory. His _Light_. Given time, they can recover from almost anything. It's one of the things that makes them so utterly terrifying to fight. Unless you kill them outright, you _will_ have to face them again, be it due to their natural regeneration, or a combination of their magic and that of their fellows.

Fallen Angels, on the other hand? Not so much. They heal at a faster rate than humans, yes; they are in all ways superior beings, after all. But even if the Light they were spun from—the Light that grants them their powers—cannot fully abandon them, disobeying God has a price. Of course it does.

In their case, no Fallen Angel is capable of healing. They can _be_ healed by another, and Azazel's invented a few things that take advantage of that loophole, but the weakness is still crippling in so many ways. And they regenerate from their wounds at a far lesser rate than an Angel with the same number of wings.

Having access to a Sacred Gear like Twilight Healing? It could be the greatest boon the Grigori receive in centuries. It would cut their casualties in half; it would mean they wouldn't have to abandon a comrade in the field because his injuries were far too crippling to be worth risking their lives just to bring home a soon-to-be corpse.

The most obvious answer, then, is to recruit Asia Argento. And that is the first step of Raynare's plan.

But Argento is weak. Vulnerable. _Mortal_.

She will die before the century is over, her Sacred Gear passing with her. Not even Azazel knows when it would reincarnate in another soul, and it could be lost to them for millennia.

And, more importantly, she would be under constant risk of abduction. Assassination. If she trained every waking moment she didn't dedicate to healing, without access to the Church's rituals, her strength would still never be enough to take on even an ordinary human force. It would easily be possible for the blowback of a failed attack against her bodyguards to kill her simply through proximity.

So no, simply recruiting her is not enough.

For the Grigori to flourish, they need Twilight Healing. Asia Argento, on the other hand, is utterly unimportant. In fact, she's a liability. A problem.

Raynare is good at solving problems. And the solution to this one is as obvious as the Sacred Gear on Argento's arm.

Though, really, it won't be on _her_ arm for all that much longer.

"When does she get here?" Raynare asks.

"In the next day or so. Enough time to prepare the ritual before the winter solstice."

Raynare has been waiting for a victory like this for a very long time. The winter solstice is less than a week away.

She can wait that much longer.

* * *

 **Alternative titles for this chapter include 'In which we are reminded that Raynare is not a good person, just because she's trying to do one good thing'.**

 **God I love writing Serafall. She's childish, she's a sis-con, and she's _fucking terrifying_. Moving to a related (hah) subject, hopefully you didn't mind all the extra world-building I dumped in through Sona's head, and that it made sense without seeming too age-wanky. Yes, in this AU with age comes competence, and you should rightfully be wary of even a two-winged Fallen like Raynare, but there's still hope. Especially if you're bullshit powerful, or have the potential to be. **

**I had a lot of fun writing the scenes between Akeno and Raynare. Akeno is, after all, my second-favourite character behind Raynare. It just so happens that they absolutely hate one another, for hopefully fairly obvious reasons. Expect snark wars (or at least snark skirmishes) whenever they're on-screen together from now on.**

 **As for Asia, well, there'll be a little more about the situation at the start of the next chapter. But I will take this moment to make it clear that Raynare, in this fic, is not some misunderstood anti-heroine. She's not a woobie being forced into something she ordinarily would never do, because she's _so_ pure and kind deep down. She is a _Fallen Angel_ , and it's very clear in canon that she doesn't give a fuck about most other people, let alone one tiny, pathetic human who could very well be long dead and forgotten by the time Raynare decides she wants to change her hairstyle _._**

 **It's monstrous from our perspective, but it's part of who she is, and I won't be hiding that.**

 **That should be everything I wanted to say. Well, except to thank my beta, Stone Mason, who also beta'd the previous chapter. Rest assured he has made it quite clear how I have dishonoured myself, my family, and my cow for forgetting to mention him in the last Author's Note.**

 **If you have any questions, concerns, or comments that I haven't addressed here, feel free to leave them in a review; the responses to the first chapter were uniformly kind, and I thank you for them.**


	3. Second Chances

"I have to ask, Raynare," Kalawarner says, once the impromptu meeting in front of the church's altar splits up, and only the two of them remain, "are you sure this is wise?"

"What do you mean?"

"Doing it here, obviously. You, of all of us, know how we're being watched. The Leviathan's visit made that quite clear, and I never even saw her. Extracting a Sacred Gear is not a quiet thing - what if the Devils find out? You can't think they won't make an effort to claim her power for their own."

"We can _make_ it quiet; we have at least a day until Argento gets here, and then another three or four until the winter solstice, depending on when she arrives. That's enough time to ward the room downstairs until it's locked tighter than her legs."

She's helped Azazel with enough of his experiments to know what his own sealing matrix looks like, when he's expecting a test to be particular volatile. Raynare has only a fraction of his skill, and not even that of his power, but extracting a Sacred Gear is orders of magnitudes less dangerous than some of what he gets up to.

The fact she can only replicate maybe one of every ten of his seals doesn't matter if that will still be enough.

"And if that fails?"

"They might see we're taking in Argento, but all they'll see is a nun joining up with the Grigori. It happens all the time; we seduce them away, they get excommunicated, and they end up with us. Interfering with that would be like us interfering with the Devil's contracting - not really worth the effort.

"They'd have to know who and what she is, and be able to recognise her by sight, in order to act before we start the ritual. If they know that much, we're fucked to begin with."

"And once we actually _do_ start the extraction, it'll be over pretty quickly." Kalawarner says, thoughtfully. "I doubt even the Leviathan's chit of a sister knows enough sorcery to break the connection before we're done. They could attack us afterward, but they'd be assaulting an entrenched force in a consecrated stronghold with no real way of preventing our retreat. The Gear would let us hold out longer, take more risks, and… yes. I can see how we'd do this."

"Plus, of course, there's the fact they'd be attacking one of Azazel's envoys," Raynare says. She has no idea if the Leviathan left any surprises behind, and she can't exactly avoid talking about what they're going to do with Argento, but it would be the height of foolishness to admit to that particular lie anywhere beyond the privacy of her own head. "They might risk it to get Argento before she's dead, but afterward? Devils have healing magic. They'd want her, but they don't _need_ her."

That isn't to say Raynare's plan is foolproof. She's taken pains to account for every level of disruption she can actually control, but there's still nothing she can do about, say, the Leviathan walking through the door and deciding she wants Argento. It would, in fact, be safer to send the nun off to the Grigori instead of bringing her here; they could remove the Gear without the slightest possibility of outside interference.

It would be the sensible thing to do. The rational one.

Raynare has had quite enough of being _rational_. There are those who call her Azazel's whore, and the mockery cuts all the deeper for all the times she's wished it was true. They call her weak. Useless. A shitty little illusionist barely worthy of her wings.

 _Fuck them_. She could send in Argento, get her Sacred Gear passed off to somebody else, and within a century they'd forget she was the one who brought it to them.

Or she could take it for her own, and a thousand years from now they'll still come begging to her door for her to heal them.

And she would, with a smile on her face and laughter in her heart. Because they'd be on their knees before her, and the world would be as it should. With Twilight Healing on her side, who could look down on her again? She'd be invaluable to Azazel. A better choice than Shemhazai's Devil bitch of a wife.

So she'll take the risks. The rewards outweigh them a hundredfold.

Raynare notices she is smiling.

It is not a very nice smile.

"On a related topic," Kalawarner says, shifting around so she's lying flat on the pew next to Raynare, "Mittelt and I finished checking the wards. You were right; the Leviathan just crashed straight through them. I'm still not sure how she didn't trip the alarms in the process, but that's to be expected. They've been fixed, anyhow."

"Thank you. Remind me to get Mittelt to lay the groundwork for something we can use to keep Argento confined to the church. No need to have her running around in the city. If she's stupid enough to heal a Devil, she'll probably stumble on some brat with a scraped knee and decide it's worthy of the physical miracle on her arm. We don't need that sort of attention."

"I'll tell her myself, don't worry about it." Kalawarner yawns. "God, I wish I was a six-wing. It took way too much effort to fix the mess the Leviathan made, and I wasn't even doing most of the work."

Raynare smirks; the expression is perfectly suited to a face like hers. "Or you could stop watching those crappy cartoons and practice controlling your channelling. With the number of hours you waste on that stuff, you might actually make some progress."

"Fuck you," Kalawarner returns easily, not even bothering to open her eyes. "My control is plenty good enough."

A light spear forms above her supine form, hovering in thin air. It's a trick Raynare has always been jealous of. _Look, Father, no hands!_

"Tell that to Mittelt."

"You realise you just indirectly complimented her, yes?"

"Doesn't count if she's not here to hear it."

"Sometimes I wonder if you two are secretly tsundere for one another. It would explain _so much_."

Raynare blinks. "What's 'tsundere' mean?"

She recognises the Japanese roots of the phrase, but the translation sounds like Kalawarner's forgotten a few words in between. And that is… rather unlikely.

"Oh, nothing." Kalawarner's voice is just nonchalantly dismissive enough to arouse Raynare's suspicion. "Look it up later, if you're interested."

"This is for interrupting you last week, isn't it?"

Kalawarner had been the first person Raynare recruited after being given the mission by Azazel. Part of that recruitment had involved walking in on her while she was _in flagrante delicto_ with two other Fallen. One male, one female, and both with barely a century to their names. Combined.

"I don't know _what_ you're talking about." Kalwarner's smile makes it clear she isn't even trying.

"Whatever," Raynare says, waving a hand at her. "I'm not dealing with you in one of your moods. Go rot your brain in front of the television some more; I'm going to read."

"Eh, I'm fine here." The way Kalawarner stretches would be publically illegal in some countries. "Send Dohnasek up if you see him; I just remembered there's something I have to ask him."

"Sure."

Raynare hops off the backboard of the pew she'd been balancing on, and walks away. Descending the stairs to the church's basement, she passes Mittelt, who is heading back the same way Raynare came. Not a word is exchanged.

Dohnaseek, as it happens, has taken Kalawarner's usual spot in front of the television; he's watching a nature documentary, of all things. Then again, Raynare's never had a handle on his hobbies. Given how shady he is in most everything else, that's probably not just a lack of care on her part.

"Kalawarner wants to talk to you." Raynare says without preamble. "Said she had something she forgot to ask you."

"Once this finishes," he replies. "Care to join me?"

They both know it's a rhetorical question.

"Don't take too long. You know how she gets."

With that, Raynare moves beyond what amounts to the living room and into her bedroom. There's a bookcase on the wall; she approaches it and plucks out a tome ordinary people would need two hands to lift. The title is (mostly) in English— _Wings of the Pratīyasamutpāda_ —and so it takes Raynare almost no time at all to translate.

Of course she doesn't _think_ in English. Nor Japanese, for that matter. Raynare predates both of them. She thinks in Enochian. The language of angels.

Her Fall had been horrific. Literally soul-crushing. It had ripped out all but a fraction of her Light; blackened her wings and left her almost unable to breathe beneath the weight of her loss. Her grief. In those first, few moments, her blood felt like tar, and her bones like splintered glass. It was only her rage that kept her sane - the vast, seething fury that roiled up inside her at the notion that it could end like _this_.

But even a literal Fall from grace could not change the way she had been raised. There are those of her fellows who hate God far more than she does - and they still default to Enochian. Some find it fitting, to blaspheme against Heaven in Heaven's own tongue.

Raynare, too, finds the irony amusing.

She settles back on her bed and opens the book, flipping to where she'd left off a couple of days before. It's a relatively recent title, written by a human magician with some surprising insights into the nature of souls. Normally, this sort of thing would be Mittelt's territory, but Raynare has decided it might be worth branching out a little, especially given she'll be extracting a Sacred Gear in a couple of days.

If there's ever a time to expand her knowledge of the most esoteric branches of sorcery, this would be it. She'd brush up on her knowledge of Sacred Gears in general—as much as she's already learned simply through osmosis, thanks to Azazel—but there'll be plenty of chances to do both.

Her mission with Hyoudou will probably last for months. Maybe even years. It really depends on when the Devils decide to try recruiting him, because of course they're _going to_ , or if Azazel decides he needs her elsewhere.

She has time.

* * *

Hyoudou Issei is a simple man.

He'd be the first to tell you that himself; he's never made a secret of what he wants out of life, as much as other people might wish he did. Issei loves women. He loves looking at them. Thinking about them. Thinking about touching them, and their beautiful, bountiful assets.

School has been interesting over the past few days. There's a new member of his class, Amano Yuuma, and she fulfils all the tropes he feels they've been missing. She's the beautiful, mysterious transfer student type, complete with the cool personality that completely and savagely shuts down anyone who asks her out.

Issei has a list of the most attractive girls at Kuoh; the lovely Amano-chan now sits in fourth place, behind Toujou Koneko, Himejima Akeno, and, of course, Gremory Rias. She has replaced Shitori Sona, though not by a significant margin.

Most people would actually be surprised that Amano doesn't place ahead of Koneko-chan, given how, shall we say, _gifted_ she is. But Koneko-chan is the mascot of Kuoh Academy, and she's just so adorable that Issei—who is not, in fact, a lolicon like Matsuda—can't justify replacing her. The thought brings to mind an image of her pouting sadly, looking down and away like the tsundere in the visual novel he's currently playing, and he just… he just _can't_.

On the other hand, there should be absolutely no surprises about the top of the list. The Two Great Ladies of Kuoh Academy earn their place for their grace, their kindness, their beauty, and, of course, their absolutely massive tracts of land.

Issei is, in the end, a simple man.

Tonight, he's finishing up the visual novel Motohama told him about last week. His friend hasn't actually played it yet, and desperately wants to, but Issei got hold of it first. Victory had been sweet; almost as sweet as Karen-chan, whose route he's almost completed.

Once he's done, he's going to run it over to Motohama's house; it's not that late, and his parents won't mind. They think it's good for him to exercise. He's so close. All he has to do is choose the right lines in the confession scene, and then sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

Six save-scum attempts later, he finally stumbles on the correct combination, and the part of Karen-chan that puts the tsun in tsundere is completely obliterated, leaving him with only the dere. The lovely, lovely dere.

Ah. Truly, Karen-chan is the best girl in _Cipher Taboo._ The fact she shares her hair colour—and two other things—with Gremory-senpai certainly helps. Naturally he'd have prefered a harem route, but perhaps that'll be in the sequel, if there is one.

"I'm just heading out to drop something off to Motohama," he says as he passes his parents sitting on the couch and watching TV, "I'll be back soon!"

"Okay, dear," his mother replies. "Don't stay out too late!"

He makes his way through the streets, strolling along the sidewalk without really concentrating on anything. It's dark, even through the streetlights, and Issei wishes it wasn't.

Not because he's scared of the dark, no. Issei doesn't like night in general. There are fewer women around, and they're usually bundled up warmer or escorted by their damn handsomes. How is he supposed to appreciate them when they're so much harder to see?

And what are the chances of a spontaneous water fight, or a wet t-shirt contest, in the (moderately) late evening? When it's cold and dark, how can anyone work up so much of a sweat that they just _have_ to strip off their clothes? Truly, the night is the enemy of those who wish to admire the female form in all its curvaceous glory.

...never let it be said that Issei lacks imagination.

Eventually, he makes it to Motohama's house, and completes the exchange. His friend's parents don't offer to invite him in afterward, for some reason, but Issei doesn't have any plans of staying anyway. No - he's back off home, maybe to finish up some homework, maybe just to sleep. He hasn't decided yet.

The streets pass in much the same way they did on the way there; Issei shivers a bit, but not as much as you'd expect him to, even given what he's wearing. He's always been just a little more inured to pain and discomfort than his friends - which is probably why they abandon him to so many beatings at the hand of the kendo club.

Ah well. It's worth it.

He's only a few turns away from home when his so-far ordinary night takes a turn straight out of anime. One moment, he's rounding a corner, and the next Koneko-chan comes flying out of the shadows. There is a gaping hole in a nearby wall, and her back is covered in splinters and dust.

Koneko-chan somehow manages to turn her sprawling half-leap, half-fall into a graceful backflip, and lands on her feet. She settles one fist in front of the other, looking for all the world like she's setting up for a casual spar, not like she was just _thrown out of a building_.

Issei is about to speak when a man steps through what remains of the house Koneko just left so explosively. He is short, with white hair and red eyes. Ordinarily, Issei might not have noticed the last, not in the dull glow of the streetlights, but they are helpfully illuminated by the _goddamn beam sword_ he's holding in his right hand.

Did Issei mention there's a gun in his left hand, too?

Because there is.

"Oh? What's this?" There is something in his tone that sets Issei on edge. Like walking through the terminal ward in a hospital. It sounds like _sickness_. "Don't tell me you've found a hostage, shitty Devil-chan! And after I just killed all the scum who were contracting with you! That's bad! That's really bad!"

What is this man talking about?

"Hyoudou. Run." Koneko-chan is usually serious, but this time the tension in her voice wouldn't be out of place on a bowstring.

"No, no, that's not right! You're meant to grab him, and then I stab through the both of you when you think I won't attack. I'll even apologise afterward to the Lord and thank Him for His providence."

"Who are you? Why are you talking to Koneko-chan like that?" At no point does Issei consider listening to her. The choice between staying or leaving Koneko-chan alone to face this madman is not a choice at all.

"I'm Freed Selzen. Sorry if I got the name order wrong, I usually let my killing do the talking. And this little girl isn't a girl at all! She's a Devil, and that means the Lord will bless me for cutting her head off and doing dirty things to the hole."

An absent part of Issei's mind wonders what his expression looks like right now. That mix of absolute disgust, shock, and confusion must be almost artistic.

Freed Selzen cackles. Actually _cackles_ , like he's something out of a fairy tale. "Don't tell me you'd feel sorry for her. Oh, you Devils really are the worst, enthralling innocent children and forcing this humble Father to purge them of the sins. Seriously, there is something wrong with you guys!"

In that moment, Freed raises his gun and opens fire. Issei barely registers the motion; the man's arm seems to change positions without passing through the intervening space. But Issei can see _enough_ \- the barrel. Koneko-chan. The distance between them.

And so he dives at her from the side, aiming to tackle her out of the way. Maybe later, he might revel in the fact that he is the first male at Kuoh to touch Koneko-chan properly, or that she is actually cuter up close than from a distance. Right now, it doesn't cross his mind.

Koneko-chan is not even five feet tall. She looks like she might fall in a stiff breeze; like her body might crumple if she packs too many books into her schoolbag. She is a soft, delicate flower in the first bloom of spring, to be respected and admired from afar.

Running into her is like slamming into a brick wall. The only reason Issei even _shifts_ her is that she was already moving. He hits her with a full-on tackle and all the strength of adrenalin, and she barely stumbles.

Issei is not concerned with any of this, though. No - his thoughts are slightly more occupied with the three holes in his gut. Individually, they are only a little larger than the nail of his thumb, but they are clustered so close together it's hard to tell where one ends and another begins.

He drops to the floor, his legs no longer able to support him. A hand presses to his stomach; it comes back as red as Gremory-senpai's hair. No, that's not quite right. This is an ugly thing, this colour. It shouldn't be here. What's it doing here?

In the background, he hears something that sounds like laughter. High and free. Freed. Is Koneko-chan safe? Issei hopes so. It wouldn't be such a bad way to go, saving a pretty girl. Not as pretty as Gremory-senpai, though. Dying in her arms would be nice.

Is that fair? Is he being unfaithful to Koneko-chan, to wish he'd been shot saving Gremory-senpai instead? Probably. But it's not fair that he had to die at all, without even experiencing the joy of a woman. Is that so much to ask?

There's a huge crash. Incredibly loud and dangerously close. But he's bleeding out anyway, so does the danger really exist? What is it going to do, kill him _more?_

He turns to look. It's the hardest thing he's ever done. Greeting him is the impossible sight of Koneko-chan using the door of a nearby shop to fend off Freed's bullets, and tossing around streetlights like javelins to keep him back. Issei wonders, absently, why she's never tried out for the tennis team. Her serve would be lethal _._

Hah. Lethal. Get it? Because he's dying? Maybe if he'd been funnier, he'd have had more of a chance against Kiba. That damn handsome, stealing away all the women. The most popular rumours at Kuoh put him with Himejima-senpai or Gremory-senpai. Sometimes both. Being the Harem King was Issei's dream! How dare Kiba threaten that?

Though, really, Issei wouldn't have minded not having a harem that much if it meant he could have had Gremory-senpai. If there has ever been a woman worth ten others, it's her.

In the pocket of his blazer—part of the uniform he never got around to changing out of—a flyer begins to glow.

"Oi, shitty Devil-chan! You're going to run out of those poles, you know. But don't worry; when you're done, I've got one just for you!"

Does this guy ever shut up? Nobody should say those words to Koneko-chan. And why is the world getting so much dark? Must be because she broke all the lights. Naughty Koneko-chan. He'll forgive her this time, out of the magnanimity of his heart. The dying should go without grudges.

Without regret.

That's no good. Issei has plenty of those. He should have hidden his porn better. What if his parents find it? Maybe he should have written a will; left it to Matsuda and Motohama. They'd carry on his legacy.

 _No, Koneko-chan, don't run that way._ _If I have to go, let it be looking at someone beautiful._

Something crackles nearby. It smells like lightning. Then footsteps, unnaturally loud. Like his body is trying to enhance everything. Pack a lifetime's worth of feeling into five minutes of dying.

A woman steps around him. She says something, but his own heartbeat drowns it out, like thunder in his chest. It sounds far too slow.

 _Gremory-senpai? Ah. That's better. Sorry, Koneko-chan._

His eyes close.

His chest stills.

"Live for me," a voice calls. There is no doubt in it. No desperation.

Only raw, absolute _authority_.

Power flares, and Hyoudou Issei takes an impossible breath.

* * *

When Raynare wakes the next morning, perhaps an hour after she fell asleep, it is to the sound of pots and pans clacking in one of the rooms beyond. She brushes the covers off with an idle motion; the form exposed is beyond poetry, beyond song.

Raynare gathers her clothes—it will be a long time until she next forgets, thanks to the Leviathan—and dons them; her body blurs and melts in the process, until she looks again like Amano Yuuma. Stepping out of the door and into the hall, she makes her way to the living room.

Once she arrives, it's to a moderately unusual sight - Kalawarner and Dohnaseek are both at the table, and Mittelt is nowhere to be found. The continued noise from the kitchen makes it clear where _she_ is.

"Hey, Kalawarner. You're not cooking today?" Raynare asks, taking the seat next to her. She tips an absent hand to Dohnaseek, who raises his newspaper in a half-salute.

"Mittelt volunteered. Guess she's been missing it."

Raynare hums, but doesn't bother to reply.

A few minutes later, Mittelt enters, carrying four plates with all the elegance of a harried waitress. Raynare considers asking her if she's old enough to have a part-time job yet, but decides against it. She could do without a dish thrown in her face and staining her uniform - it'd be inconvenient to layer the illusions to hide that too.

What is laid before them would take pride of place on a king's table. Muffins, eggs, bacon, and hollandaise sauce; it should be impossible to make such a simple dish so beautiful, but Raynare has long since given up being surprised about what Mittelt manages in the kitchen.

It seems almost a crime to ruin the presentation, but Raynare is hungry, and if she takes too long Mittelt might think she's actually admiring the dish. The funny thing is, it doesn't actually taste that much better than Kalawarner's last attempt at the same thing - but it also doesn't look like it should be sacrificed to by cultists, so there's that.

Breakfast is over almost as soon as it begins, and Raynare leaves not long after, slipping out the door and off to school. The streets are not particularly empty, and she sees a fair few of her classmates sedately strolling along. With nothing better to do, she stares up into the sky, wondering where Heaven is hiding right now. Is anyone up there watching her?

Just in case, she waves jauntily. The mockery of the motion is something Mark Twain could only dream of replicating with the written word.

Eventually, she arrives at her destination. The moment before she crosses the boundary, she pauses. One foot is halfway in the air, just about to pass the line that separates Kuoh from not-Kuoh. She retracts it, slowly, carefully, and cocks her head to the side. Her skin prickles. Something feels wrong.

It is a feeling compounded by Himejima's approach, side-by-side with Sitri's Queen and a few other Devils Raynare doesn't recognise. There is no overt threat in their steps, but Raynare does not like what lurks in Himejima's eyes. It is not satisfied, or furious, or smug. Her gaze is perfectly serious, and that is the problem. Himejima is supposed to look at Raynare like she's nothing.

Beneath her skin, her wings flex. It is galling, to consider retreating from children, but Raynare will not fight them a foot from their stronghold.

"Amano-san," Himejima says. It is the first time she has addressed Raynare as a person. "My King would like to speak with you."

"As would mine," adds Sitri's Queen. Raynare's heard her name a few times around the campus, but didn't care enough to remember it. Tsu-baka or something? Probably not; the joke's not even that original, anyway.

"I like what you've done with the place," she says, as casual as a cat. "There's something to be said for the bold, the bright, and the _incredibly obvious._ "

The flicker of surprise on their faces is almost insulting. Did they really think she wouldn't notice?

"They're not for you." Himejima almost sounds unhappy about it, and Raynare relaxes slightly. There's sincerity in that unhappiness. "Rather, they're related to why Kaichou and Buchou request your presence."

Interesting. Something has happened, though Raynare has no idea what; something they think she might be involved with. Whatever it is, it's important or threatening enough that she can feel thrice as many active wards than the day before. Individually, they're not particularly powerful, but they rarely are. The strength of a ward schema is almost always in its complexity.

"Well then," she says, shoving her hands in her pockets like a recalcitrant child in the face of discipline, "let's go see what they want, shall we?"

The now-hidden fingers of her left hand brush her phone, tapping out a text message to Kalawarner. Two words: _be careful_.

When she walks over the boundary, the truth of Himejima's words is confirmed - the magic that brushes against her senses is not inherently hostile to her. It seems tuned simply to keep uninvited guests out. There's probably more to it than that, given the students would be unable to attend if it restricted access only to those with a verbal invitation from one of the warders, but Raynare doesn't have the time or inclination to sit down and study it right now. Not that they'd let her even if she did.

For the third time in as many days, Raynare finds herself in the student council's office. It is far more full on this occasion; she's pretty sure the entirety of both Sitri and Gremory's peerages are present. They've arranged themselves around the room, conveniently clustered near most of the windows and the door. How reassuring.

"So," she says, hopping up onto one of the desks instead of taking the only available seat, "what's got you all in such a fuss? Please don't tell me Hyoudou flipped out overnight; that would be just my luck."

Oh for _God's_ _sake_. She'd meant it as a joke, but based on the way some of their expressions flicker—the white-haired midget's especially—something actually _did_ happen involving Hyoudou.

"Let me guess," she asks, "he was walking down the street and started perving on some random woman, who turned out to be Tiamat. Or Gabriel. Or, Heaven, why not Ophis?"

"No." The voice is soft, but all the more serious for it. Looks like short and stoic was around for whatever happened.

Raynare cocks her head to the side, the very picture of innocent curiosity.

"Well, are you going to tell me what really happened, or was I called here for another reason entirely? It'll be my first time with such a large group, so please be gentle."

A beat.

Half the room starts blushing. The other half starts glaring at her. Well, almost the other half. Sitri is an interesting mixture of both, and Gremory looks more amused than anything else. Himejima, too, despite herself.

"Does the name Freed Selzen mean anything to you?" Gremory asks while her fellow King recovers. Good. They're finally getting on with it.

"No."

"Are you sure? Because last night, a Stray Exorcist calling himself that attacked one of my cute little subordinates while she was out fulfilling a contract. Issei-kun stumbled across their fight, and was killed in the process."

 _And if he's still dead, I'll kiss Mittelt. With tongue._

"Can't help you there, sorry," Raynare says. "I haven't used an exorcist in a few decades. What does he look like?"

"Short, white-haired, red eyes. More perverted than Hyoudou-san. He was disgusting."

Raynare finds it amusing that it is the short, white-haired girl who describes the short, white-haired exorcist. Though if her earlier glare had been any indication, that's where the resemblance most emphatically ends.

"Still doesn't ring any bells," she replies, because it doesn't. The truth will only help her here; it's quite obvious why they've called her in. "If he's a Stray, he's not with any faction I've heard of."

"You'll help us look for him, then?" Sitri interjects. "You can imagine that most of what we know about Exorcists, Stray or not, relates to fighting them. Nor does our reach extend particularly far into the Grigori. Naturally, your _cooperation_ would be greatly appreciated."

Raynare almost forgets herself enough to glare at Sitri. _Almost_. She's preempted Raynare's own offer of the exact same thing, and there's no way it isn't deliberate. Now it looks like Sitri is manipulating Raynare into helping, not that Raynare is proposing it out of the magnanimity of her heart (so to speak).

Yes, either way she has an excuse to stay in the city long enough that she doesn't have to change her plans regarding Argento and her Sacred Gear. That's a win, especially given how colossally she's fucked up with Hyoudou. Strictly speaking her orders and her goals never had anything to do with keeping him alive, only everyone else around him, but it's the principle of the thing. Recalcitrant lech, getting himself killed the _one day_ Raynare decided he'd be safe enough.

Ordinarily, Sitri being the one to request her continued assistance without Raynare needing to suggest it would imply she's having a measure of success in fostering a sense of reliance and reliability.

 _If_ it wasn't more obvious than Himejima's tits that the girl thought she was getting one by Raynare in the process.

"Oh, of course," Raynare says, sounding for all the world like she'd love nothing better, "that's what I'm here for, isn't it? I'll make my inquiries, don't you worry. In the meantime, if you need any help scouring the city proper, don't hesitate to ask. The big, bad, scary Exorcist is far less dangerous to me than to you, after all."

It's not a statement entirely born from arrogance. Exorcists are the Church's weapons against what howls in the night. They are, in many ways, the mortal world's first and last line of defense against the supernatural. It seems like a suicidal task - when an Exorcist takes up their sword, they do it in full knowledge that they may end up fighting monsters who have been around since before the human race even knew what a sword _was_.

But that is perhaps the least of their problems. Raynare is a two-winged Fallen. Her power, compared to most of the supernatural world, is barely pushing average. But she can—and has—taken a man's head off at the neck by slapping him hard enough. There are those who can do the same thing to mountains.

How, then, are ordinary people meant to contend against her, let alone the rest of what is arrayed against them? The Church is well aware of how terribly the odds are stacked against them - so they do what humanity does best.

They cheat.

An Exorcist is human only by the vaguest definitions of the term. Enhanced by God-given rituals so great and terrible they leave indelible marks on their very soul, they are stronger, faster, and most importantly more _durable_ than their fellows. As instruments of the Church, their very presence is anathema to the supernatural, slowing and weakening their foes over time unless they have the strength to resist it.

Exorcists are trained almost before they learn to walk, but that alone is not enough to make up for the vast, nigh-insurmountable gap between skills learned over twenty years and two hundred, or even two thousand. Which is why the Church dumps as many memories into their heads as their enhanced forms can handle—memories of combat, of war, of victory—gathered from the Exorcists who have come before.

Much of their training, in fact, revolves around helping them deal with that fact. But the burden of a hundred half-lives is still sometimes enough to drive their bearer insane. It is a small price to pay for guaranteeing humanity the ability to fight most of their foes on a level playing field.

Raynare approves of the pragmatism, though the Church's focus on increasing their success rate has, over the years, slowed the number of Stray Exorcists making their way to the Grigori. It's unfortunate, especially since the nature of an Exorcist means they're much harder to sway any other way, but you can't have everything.

Returning to the point at hand, Exorcists are weapons of the Church. Of God. For all their effectiveness against, well, basically everything else, they are not particularly useful against Angels, who are forged from the same Light that empowers the Exorcists themselves. And why should they be? They're on the same side.

The fortunate side-effect of the origin of their powers is that a Fallen Angel—who still carries a memory of Light within their soul—is affected far less by an Exorcist's presence than a Devil of comparative strength. Freed Sellzen might be a cause for concern for Sitri, Gremory, and their peerages, but Raynare is less than worried.

"I don't think we'll need it." The speaker is a pretty-boy even amongst pretty-boys. She glances at him briefly before looking away; yes, he's definitely Mittelt's type.

"Whatever you say," Raynare says, shrugging. "Doesn't matter to me either way."

She uncrosses her legs the same way a courtesan might, and jumps off the desk.

"Unless there's anything else, I guess I'll be off. Class is starting soon, after all, and I'd _hate_ to be late! Well, that, and the fact I want to see Hyoudou's reaction to his not-so-permanent death. I imagine it'll be amusing."

Thankfully, Gremory insults neither of them by acting as if she has no idea what Raynare is talking about.

Nobody stops her, and so Raynare leaves the room, pulling out her phone. There's a message from Kalawarner telling her in no uncertain terms to contact the woman as soon as Raynare's safe. So she does - by sending a reply asking her and Dohnaseek to look into a Stray Exorcist called Freed Sellzen, with an accompanying description.

She receives an acknowledgement moments before she steps foot into her classroom. Good. One less thing to worry about, for now at any rate. Raynare had considered skipping the rest of the day and participating in the search herself, but she's supposed to be a liaison between the Devils and the Grigori. It's necessary to stick around them, at least for today, just so she can pass on anything either side uncovers.

Plus a part of her really does want to revel in Hyoudou's inevitable what-the-fuck as he starts to realise the world is nothing like the way he understands it.

* * *

 **Oh, hey Issei. Raynare thought you'd be safe enough for one night, but it was I, the actions of offscreen characters!**

 **For those unaware, Shemhazai is one of Azazel's friends. He's also married. To a Devil (they're expecting a kid). In this story, Fallen can't heal. Equally, Devils can, so it follows that Shemhazai's wife would be one of the few choices the Grigori had for healing. I leave any other potential interpretation for Raynare's thoughts on the subject to the audience.**

 **If it's necessary to mention, Raynare's musing about Asia are hers, not mine.**

 **Here's to not having fucked up Issei so abysmally I should just give up now. I estimate it's a fifty-fifty chance.**

 **My beta, Stone Mason—to whom I owe a thousand thanks—told me the dining scene wasn't food porn-y enough. Alas, I am no Harbin. Forgive me.**

 **On Exorcists: in this universe, being old makes you scary. The Church is well aware of this, and they're not stupid. So their versions of Exorcists are slightly more terrifying to make up for the fact their enemies are too.**

 **Once again, I thank you all for your reviews to the last chapter. They were equally encouraging and useful. As usual, if you have any questions or comments on this chapter (or any particular parts of it), feel free to continue leaving them!**


	4. Martyr

"He's made himself pretty scarce," Raynare says, just past noon the next day. It's an idle comment, more to fill the silence than anything else. Kalawarner doesn't reply; she's studying the scene, crouching down and brushing her fingers against scorch marks on the ground.

Meanwhile, Raynare swipes a hand against the sky, dismissing the tracking spell she stole from one of Mittelt's personal grimoires a couple of decades prior. She's not surprised it failed. If finding an Exorcist, Stray or not, was that easy, they'd be useless against anyone with half a brain.

Trying it doesn't cost her anything, though. Everyone makes mistakes eventually, and Freed Sellzen sounds unhinged enough that he'd probably welcome being found, just so he'd have something else to kill. For now, though, it looks like she'll have no luck hunting him down through the obvious methods.

"Why are we here, Raynare?" Kalawarner asks, rising from the floor; it should not be possible to make such a mundane action look so utterly liquid. "I can understand that the Stray has made you curious—I am too—but you know we won't find him. Not like this."

"Can't I want to spend the day wandering the city with a friend?"

There are deserts less dry than the way Kalawarner turns to look at Raynare.

"Fine, fine," Raynare says, "you're right, I know this isn't going to help. But we've got to look like we're _trying_. There's no way they haven't wondered if the Stray is connected to us. Sure, they probably don't believe he actually is—Sitri's not so stupid that she can't see the obvious—but they have to be a little suspicious."

She shrugs dismissively.

"Ordinarily, I wouldn't care, but we need the attention off us until the solstice comes and we've dealt with Argento. So instead of disappearing from their eyes while we go through our contacts, we have to be seen to be doing something. They'll distrust us less if we're acting where they can see."

That's part of the reason Raynare invited Kalawarner in the first place. She's placating them by shedding more light on her group; the Devils must have assumed there were more Fallen in their city than just Raynare, but now they have concrete proof through the eyes of their familiars.

It's a good thing none of them have strayed close enough to be able to actually listen to what Raynare and Kalawarner are saying. Then they'd notice all they were hearing were the lyrics of the Spice Girls' Greatest Hits on loop.

It's not paranoia if there really _are_ monolithic embodiments of pure evil out to get you.

Of course, drawing the Devil's attention to the two of them also helps to remove it from Mittelt while she goes to collect Argento from the airport. In Raynare's opinion, no real plan accomplishes less than three things at once. Distracting them from Argento is actually her main goal, but it's certainly not her only.

"Fair enough," Kalawarner says, "though surely they're at least smart enough to know that trying to find an Exorcist by wandering the city and tossing out the occasional scrying spell doesn't work."

"They might, but I made sure there was plenty of time between when I told them I'd be asking around and when we actually came out here. If we act like we're being decisive, they'll assume we're following up leads, not running the intrigue equivalent of the shell game.

"At the end of the day, whether or not Gremory has a pedigree more impressive than her cup size, she's just a kid, and Sitri isn't much better. They have no reason to suspect we even _have_ a second motive for staying around. And they still don't want to piss me off too much, for obvious reasons. So I think we'll be fine."

"If you say so." There is no scepticism in Kalawarner's voice, for all that the phrasing might imply it. "Do you think our decisive searching could take us to the mall? I'm a little hungry."

Raynare laughs, as light as a summer breeze. "I'm sure it could."

As they walk, Raynare continues to think. She might not have left the church this morning expecting to find the Stray, but that doesn't mean she doesn't want to. His presence is disturbing on far more levels than any physical threat. There are very, very few Stray Exorcists not affiliated with the Grigori, and they're usually the ones excommunicated for conduct, not faith or sanity.

The zealots who kill anyone and anything that moves, as long as they've declared themselves God's enemy. Some of them don't even wait for proof - the White Lady springs to mind.

Freed Sellzen could not be one of them, by simple virtue of his apparent perversion. A Stray Exorcist who still believed would never even _joke_ about having sex with a Devil - it is blasphemy, and they are faithful servants of the Lord, after all. It's a truth all the more unfortunate for Raynare, who much prefers the idea of Sellzen being a zealot over the alternative.

So, on the balance of probabilities, Sellzen is associated with the Grigori in some fashion. Which leaves Raynare with several question she'd rather not be dealing with. Why is he here? Why is he jeopardising a mission handed to her by Azazel himself? Whether or not she's faking more to that mission than there truly is to the Devils, _killing Hyoudou_ directly contravenes everything Azazel told her.

The only explanations, apart than Sellzen being a truly stray Stray Exorcist—unlikely, to say the least—are either carelessness… or malice. If Sellzen's master holds him on a leash loose enough that he's permitted to interfere with the actions of other Fallen without even contacting them first, that's concerning enough. But the far more troubling alternative is that someone is deliberately trying to stir up trouble in Kuoh.

Attacking a member of Gremory's peerage is not something to be done lightly. Even discounting the Lucifer, the House of Gremory and its scions are old and influential nobility in the Underworld. And they are known for how carefully they hoard all that they call their own - including their pieces. If white and gloomy had been killed, Rias Gremory and the forces available to her would never have let it rest until recompense had been drawn, one way or another. It wouldn't have led to a war, but a skirmish? Not out of the question.

Combine that with the fact that Hyoudou had been killed, and a disturbing picture originates. If Sellzen had been sent deliberately, then his actions indicate a goal of inciting the Devils, circumventing Azazel's orders, and potentially throwing blame on the Fallen.

 _Wait a minute_.

Hmm. Perhaps there's another explanation. It wouldn't have been the first time that the Church tried to stir up their old enemies against one another. And the Church must have their own off-the-books soldiers - including Exorcists. You don't survive for thousands of years as an institution—however _benevolent_ —without learning that some evils are necessary.

The Grigori have their internal squabbles, but Azazel has led them for longer than humanity has been civilised, and there has never been a rebellion against his rule. To Raynare, the thought is inconceivable. There are those who go against the spirit of his orders if they have not been explicitly forbidden to do something, and they think it will benefit the Faction—she is one of them—but Raynare had been warned directly away from even laying a hand on Hyoudou.

No; the more she thinks about it, the more likely it is that this a Church plot. Inciting a skirmish with the Devils serves no one in the Grigori. What sort of fool would want to be one step closer to open war? Even warmongers like Kokabiel seem content with the situation at hand. And diverting the Underworld's attention—however slightly—to the Grigori permits the Church more freedom to act.

 _Cui bono_? Who benefits? The Church have the most likely motive, the resources, and they have done far worse in the past than killing a single child in the name of God. They might not have even known he had a Sacred Gear; they'd probably have tried to recruit him otherwise. In all honesty, Raynare respects the sort of opportunistic cunning that notices Fallen and Devils in one city, and jumps at the chance to pit them against one another.

Humans. They're so cute when they think they're being smart.

Lost in thought, she almost doesn't notice when they reach the mall. Luckily, it's not her turn to pick where they eat, so all she has to do is follow Kalwarner's lead. They end up eating at some small bakery - the food is adequate without being inspiring. Raynare is not disappointed; she expected nothing more. There's a marked difference between even Kalwarner's cooking and anything a human can come up with.

"Where to next?" Kalwarner asks. "I'm not very familiar with this place."

"Neither am I," Raynare replies, "but I think we might as well just keep heading toward the outskirts of this town. The closer we stick to the school, the less likely it is that the Exorcist will be there."

"You said Exorcist, not Stray."

"So I did."

Kalwarner raises a lone eyebrow, more aristocratic than any queen.

"So you think it was actually the Church?" She pauses, thinking. "Makes sense, I guess. They have the least to lose and the most to gain. Are you going to tell the Devils?"

"I'll have to," Raynare says, "but not yet. No matter my logic, they're unlikely to believe me straight out without some sort of proof. Not for something like this. Once Mittelt returns with Argento, I'll pair her with Dohnaseek. The two of them should be able to narrow down the Exorcist's location at least a little. If we find him, we can get the evidence we need in short order."

Even Exorcists break. Most of the time, it only takes three words.

"I take it you're going to want my help with the wards for the ritual, then."

"If you wouldn't mind."

Kalawarner shrugs, a decidedly uncaring gesture. "As long as you do all the fiddly stuff, sure."

* * *

On the other side of the city, a motorbike weaves through traffic with almost contemptuous ease, slipping through gaps so fleeting they'd make a mayfly blush. When it finally arrives at the airport, it does not so much park as _drift._ The motion is as smooth as ice.

Mittelt dismounts and removes her helmet, tossing her hair out over her shoulder. Cliched, to be sure, but it looks good, and she knows it. Plus her hair _does_ get cramped, after a while, and the journey from the church to the airport wasn't exactly short.

She presses a hand to the bike, and the air around it distorts with colours that defy mortal comprehension. Most people secure their motorcycles by taking away the keys. Most people are not Mittelt. She layers wards of obfuscation and protection in a nine-dimensional equivalent of a pentagram—the irony amuses her—and adds three different tracking charms just to be sure.

All of this is done in the space between seconds, power unfolding in fractal patterns that splinter the world around her only to fade as quickly as they appear. There are mages who have literally sold their souls for a fraction of Mittelt's skill, and it shows.

She strolls into the airport, helmet tucked underneath her arm, and makes her way to the arrivals lounge before taking a seat. Argento's plane should be arriving within the next half hour or so, and then Mittelt can get out of here and back to the church.

It's not, precisely, that she _dislikes_ humans, or even humanity in general. She is no Raynare, and thank God for that. It's raw fact that a Fallen Angel is superior to a human. Mittelt doesn't feel the need to say it over and over again. If you need to boast, then your enemy doesn't know who you are - and if they don't, then you're clearly not as powerful as you think you are.

Mittelt knows exactly how powerful _she_ is—not very—and she has no delusions of grandeur. Unlike some people. She's on this expedition for her sister's sake; well, hers, and Kalwarner's. Raynare is a rude, overbearing bitch with less class than an abandoned school, but Kalawarner still cares for her, and that means Mittelt has to at least make a token effort to keep her alive.

The fact that Raynare has saved her almost as many times in return is nothing more than Mittelt's due for putting up with her. Thank God she's not as incompetent as she is annoying, at least, or else they'd both be long dead.

Mittelt's fingers drum against her thigh, tapping out the beat to some song she can't quite remember. She crosses her legs almost absently; wrapped in the tight leathers of her biking gear as they are, the motion draws admiring glances from around the room.

Put her alongside Raynare, or Kalawarner, and most people don't notice Mittelt; she's shorter, looks younger, and her curves… aren't. All things considered, however, that comparison isn't exactly fair. It would take someone like Gabriel to outshine Raynare— _Goddamn bitch_ —and Kalawarner is no slouch in the looks department either.

Mittelt is not particularly stunning by the standards of the world she was born into. But she is still a Fallen Angel - in a room filled with humans, she is the most beautiful thing they have ever seen.

The languid arch of her back as she stretches her arms to the roof, fingers intertwined, is a seduction as casual as it is alluring. The way she unzips her jacket to pull out her phone from a pocket within would not be out of place in a very different kind of establishment. When her tongue traces her lips—dry as they are from her journey—one woman actually trips over her own luggage.

 _Too easy._

Soon, she hears the arrival call for Argento's flight. Good. Soon she'll finally be able to get out of here. Tucking her phone back into her pocket—the story will hold for another few hours—she stands up. There's no point waiting to collect Argento if the girl can't see her; Mittelt's short enough as it is.

Sure enough, Mittelt only has to wait a few minutes before she sees Argento, dressed in a nun's habit. She's been excommunicated - so why does she bother? Then again, maybe she just didn't own anything else. If she was naive enough to heal a Devil, she might have even believed in all that claptrap about eschewing material possessions in favour of faith.

Mittelt knows exactly what _faith_ gets you. She sees it in the mirror every time she wakes up.

"Asia-chan!" she exclaims, running up to the girl and throwing her arms around her. "I'm so glad you're here. Raynare's told me _all_ about you!"

Argento looks overwhelmed, but not out of disinclination for such exuberant contact. Her brow is furrowed cutely in confusion, and she seems to be spelling out words silently if the way her mouth moves is any indication. Ah. Mittelt remembers, now - once the Church found out about what Argento could do, they didn't let her leave the Vatican. Sensible precautions, really.

For Argento to speak fluent Japanese when she'd never have expected to actually go there is asking too much, especially given her species. There are very few races who are natural omniglots; apart from the Three Factions, Mittelt's pretty sure there aren't any others.

Of course, there are things out there that don't need to know more than one language to communicate. Ophis springs to mind - she probably hasn't bothered learning anything other than whatever a dragon's natural tongue is. Why would she need to? When you are so absurdly, incomprehensibly powerful that they call you the _Infinite Dragon God_ , you are not misunderstood. There is no way the universe would allow it.

Maybe that's where the Devils got the idea? After all, they speak and hear one language to themselves, and their magic automatically translates it in both directions. Perhaps they got together and designed a spell modelled of the way monsters like Ophis interact with the world.

Hmm. A topic to research when she gets back to the Grigori. There has to be something out there about the subject - surely Azazel has considered it, if nobody else. The Lord of the Grigori has more than a passing interest in the magic of other species. It'd be stupid of him not to, and Azazel is very, very far from stupid.

"Sorry, Asia," Mittelt says, switching to Italian, "forgive my excitement. I was so happy to see you, after everything Raynare's told me, that I forgot which language you'd be more comfortable with. Is this better?"

The last is said with a beaming smile. Mittelt is well aware where her appeal differs from her compatriots; the same expression on Raynare would be mildly disturbing. Then again, pretty much everything Raynare does is mildly disturbing.

Argento nods, by all appearances still a little overwhelmed. Good. The more flustered she is, the less likely it is that Mittelt will actually have to talk to her.

"Well, come on then," she says, as bright as sunshine, "let's go!"

Tugging Argento along with her free arm—her helmet's still tucked under the other—Mittelt leads her out of the airport, moving just fast enough that Argento has to rush to keep up. The old couple they pass on their way out smile, commenting to one another about 'youthful exuberance'. Hah. If only they knew.

"Um, excuse me—" Argento begins when they reach Mittelt's bike.

"You can call me Mittelt," Mittelt interjects, "most people do. I'm not quite sure why. I hope you don't mind the bike; I have a spare helmet. Hop on now, we don't want to be late!"

She holds out the aforementioned helmet, cocking out a hip and resting a hand on it. Mittelt is not the very picture of impatience, but the implication is there. It is helped along, of course, by the mild compulsion spell she cast in the act of spreading her fingers against her side. Sure, she _could_ have manipulated Argento the mundane way, but why bother wasting time?

Unlike some people, Mittelt doesn't like to play with her food. Not that she has any interest in eating Argento in the first place. Not her type.

Argento accepts the helmet, and hops on behind Mittelt after she mounts the bike. The wards protecting it recognise their maker, and dispel automatically, as per their design. The nun's arms wrap gingerly around her waist, and Mittelt guns the engine. Not too fast, though; Argento is far squishier than Mittelt, and she doesn't want to run into an accident the girl won't survive.

Highly unlikely, given Mittelt's driving skill and reaction time, but it never hurts to be cautious. Better a minor risk Argento can patch up with her Sacred Gear than Mittelt having to explain how she got Raynare's prize killed by some drunkard in a four-wheel drive.

Honestly, Raynare is welcome to Argento. Mittelt hasn't even considered stealing the little chit's Gear, no matter how much it would piss Raynare off, and not just because Kalawarner would be disappointed in her. Spending a significant proportion of her time sitting around healing idiots who were too gung-ho to consider that discretion was the better part of valor?

No thank you.

The journey through the city is relatively swift, though not as fast as Mittelt could fly, and definitely not comparable to teleportation. But the whole point of this exercise is to not give the Devils—or anyone else—an indication of what's happening. Going loud, so to speak, would defeat the purpose. And it's not like Mittelt was going to protest a chance to ride her bike, even if Raynare had been the one to tell her to do it.

Instead of riding straight to the church, Mittelt parks in the garage of a nearby house. It's not hers, but the owners won't protest. She's far from that careless. Mittelt has to help Argento dismount; her legs are a little wobbly from the journey. Probably the first time she's been on a _real_ bike.

"We're not staying here?" Argento asks.

Mittelt frowns. Has she thrown off the compulsion that quickly? Interesting. Maybe it's something to do with her Sacred Gear - it's the first time Mittelt's cast anything on someone who had one. Too bad Raynare probably won't permit her to experiment on the girl; it could interfere with the process.

She _could_ just ignore Raynare, but even Mittelt won't risk such a massive boon for the Grigori. Her curiosity isn't worth her life, not when one day Mittelt might be the one on the brink of death, only able to be saved by Argento's Sacred Gear.

Well. It'll be Raynare's by that point, but whatever. Not important.

"No, I'm just dropping my bike off. We're staying in the church nearby; I'm sure you'll be glad to see some familiar ground."

Argento nods in agreement. She can't do much else, not when Mittelt layers the compulsion around her a little tighter this time. It's a little disappointing how easy it is to ensorcel the girl, but she is human, with the paltry resistance to magic that comes along with her species. And the obliviousness to it being used.

After a brief and not particularly enthusiastic walk, Mittelt arrives at the church with Argento in tow. The wards drape themselves across her skin like overly affectionate cobwebs, and she brushes them away; as the caster, it's relatively easy for her to add a brief exception for Argento. It'll last until she can reconfigure them properly, at any rate.

"I've got a few things to do," she says, "so if you want to make your way to one of the rooms, you can set up there. Don't worry - we have spare clothes and everything for you, thanks to Dohnaseek. There's a television if you want to watch it, just don't touch the laptops."

With a slight mental nudge to accompany the suggestion, the girl heads off, and Mittelt is left blessedly alone.

She descends into the sub-basement through the trapdoor, her wings phasing out through her jacket to slow her fall. The room is quiet except for the pulse of magic that echoes against her bones. This is the heart of the church's ward schema, and it shows.

 _Time to get to work_.

Mittelt raises a hand, and Light pools around her fingers.

* * *

When Raynare arrives back at the church, Kalawarner right behind her, it's late in the evening. She's been 'searching' all day. Hopefully it's enough to convince the Devils of her dedication. Then again, she'll probably head out again tomorrow, after laying the groundwork for the ritual. It'll give her something to do while she waits for Mittelt and Dohanseek to _actually_ find the Exorcist. And it never hurts to be safe.

"Mittelt should be back with Argento," she says, "so can you go and find her and Dohanseek? Tell them about the Exorcist, and everything you and I discussed about him. They should be able narrow down his location in the next day or so. I need to check on our newly-resident nun."

After all, Raynare can't exactly start the ritual from scratch. She needs to prepare, and that involves Argento.

"Sure," Kalwarner says. "Knowing Mittelt, she's probably in the ward room anyway, and I could do without you two getting into another brawl because you interrupted her work."

Harsh, but admittedly fair.

"Go ahead," Raynare says, waving a hand in the general direction of Mittelt's… lair. "I'll see you later."

With that, she turns away, heading toward the spare room. There's only one, and even an idiot would be able to tell that the rest were occupied. Either Argento will be in it, or Raynare will encounter her on the way.

Sure enough, Raynare hears Argento shuffling around inside what's now her bedroom long before she actually reaches the door. She knocks perfunctorily on the door, and opens it.

"Hello, Asia," she says, not unkindly, "how are you finding your accommodations?"

There's no point being hostile to the girl; things will be so much easier if she doesn't suspect what's going to happen until she's trussed up to the altar. That's one of the reasons she's speaking Italian instead of Japanese.

"R-Raynare!" Argento says, bowing quickly. "Thank you for taking me in. I'm very grateful."

 _How touching_. She seems genuine, too, which is the most amusing part. Here Argento is, an ex-nun for less than a week or two, talking with one of the creatures she'd have been warned away from her entire life - and there's not even a twitch of revulsion on her face.

There has to be something wrong with her. Raynare has been alive for so long that she regards a year the same way she does an hour, and she has met very few people capable of shelving their beliefs so quickly.

Though maybe Argento is just that kind - she did heal a Devil, after all. Maybe she's just one of those people who are universally nice; who never have a bad word to say about anyone, even if they might sometimes be thinking it.

Raynare likes those sorts of people.

They're _incredibly_ easy to manipulate.

"How could I not?" Raynare asks, taking a seat on the bed. There is nothing sultry about her grace, not this time. She sits with all the dignity you'd expect from someone so incomprehensibly _old_. "I know more so than most what it feels like to be in your situation. You care too much, and so they spurn you and everything you've done."

Her voice is the perfect mix of sympathy and understanding.

"They probably never told you _why_ an Angel can Fall, did they? I imagine all you know about the Fallen is that we must be avoided or put down at any cost for our blasphemy against the Lord."

Argento looks like she's going to protest, but then reconsiders. Raynare is, after all, right, which is why she brought it up in the first place. Human curiosity is strong, and the Church often draws in those who genuinely want to make the world a better place. The majority are good people, even if their varying definitions of 'good' sometimes don't mesh with other's.

Combine humanity's incessant desire to understand with the inherently sympathetic hearts of so many of the Church's flock, and a problem arises: not every Fallen is like Kokabiel, or to a lesser extent, Raynare. It's almost pathetic, but some of them truly do have sob stories surrounding their Fall.

The Grigori have recruited thousands of people simply by telling them a (not even that) edited version of the lives of some of their members, as an argument as to why God is not as great or as kind as He's made out to be. Some have even come of their own volition, after stumbling upon secrets the Church does their best to hide.

Naturally, the Church is aware of this. So they do their best to establish the Fallen as enemies first and people second. It works, for the most part, but if you can get through to someone, the almost-truth has much more of an impact.

Frankly, Raynare finds it amusing. The idea that humans can be tricked into believing that a _Fallen Angel_ is something virtuous and worthy of sympathy only goes to show their egocentrism. Raynare, certainly, wants and needs nothing of the sort - feeling sorry for someone implies they're in a worse situation than you are, and Raynare is inherently superior to anything a human will ever be.

Even on her worst day, she is still unfathomably greater than someone like Argento.

"I can tell you, if you'd like. The story of my Fall isn't a pretty one, but if it'll help you understand why I sympathise, I've had thousands of years to get over it. There's no shame in doubting me, Asia. I am, after all, a Fallen Angel."

Raynare flares her wings - a large, extravagant gesture. The tips brush the sides of the room, and she shivers imperceptibly.

"No, no," Argento says, shaking her head almost as quickly as her hands. It's cute, in the same way a puppy is. "I couldn't pry into something so personal! You've been nothing but kind to me."

Raynare does nothing so cliched as smiling smugly when Argento isn't looking at her. Her satisfaction is a hidden thing.

"Thank you," Raynare says. "Now, I have a few things I need you to do - don't worry, they're nothing strenuous, and both to your benefit. We'll be done quickly, too, and then you can finish getting settled down. Kalawarner, my friend, will probably be making dinner soon, if you're feeling hungry."

As if on cue, Argento's stomach rumbles briefly, and she flushes. In reply, Raynare chuckles. Her laughter is a soft, indulgent thing, like a mother to her child.

"First, I need you to lie down on the bed. Mittelt added a brief exception to the wards to bring you here, but that won't last forever. I need to make it permanent, for obvious reasons. We wouldn't want you harmed by the very magic meant to keep you safe, would we?"

Raynare is, of course, lying. Mittelt has already done exactly that, but it makes a convenient excuse to gather the data she needs from the girl for the ritual.

"Okay," Argento says. "I've never seen someone use ward magic before - can I watch?"

"You won't be able to see any of it," Raynare replies, "unless you've had training in sorcery. But I doubt that - they probably wanted you to use your Sacred Gear and nothing else, right?"

She's not trying to actively turn Argento. There's no point, not when the girl will be dead in a couple of days. But it's habit by now to speak badly of the Church, and who and what it represents. It's not like Argento would expect anything else from her, anyway.

"I tried to learn in my spare time," Argento says, "but I never got very far. D-do you think you could teach me a little? If you're ever free, of course! I wouldn't want to impose."

The sentences are almost stuttered out; Argento looks down and to the side, the very picture of embarrassed presumption. That, at least, is good. She treats Raynare with the respect she deserves.

Raynare shrugs, though there is nothing cruel about it. "I won't be able to for a while - we're dealing with a small situation at the moment. I'll probably be in and out of the Church for the next few days. Don't worry, though; it's nothing you need to seriously concern yourself over."

She refrains from suggesting that Argento could ask Mittelt, if she _really_ wanted to learn. While the thought is amusing, mostly for how much it would piss Mittelt off, she doesn't want to tempt her into experimenting any further on Argento than she probably already wants to.

Raynare draws her fingers through the space above Argento's body, adding an unnecessary trail of sun-gold dust after the motion for no other reason than to see the awe on Argento's face at the display. Invisible to the girl's eyes, the air splinters like glass beneath Raynare's hand, spiralling kaleidoscopes warping and twining through and across Argento's flesh. They are every colour and no colour at all.

Argento shifts, briefly, discomforted without quite knowing why as Raynare's sorcery plunges into her soul.

"If your Sacred Gear activates, don't try and turn it off. It's just part of the process - they come from God, after all, and that conflicts with a significant proportion of the wards that make up our schema. I need to get a lock on its spiritual resonance so I can key in a specific exception for it, and thereby you. It'll pass soon."

It's not actually a lie; Mittelt would have done a similar thing when she actually did what Raynare is pretending to do right now. She just wouldn't have been so careless as to allow the feedback to bleed through Argento. Not that Raynare is being careless either - there are just certain unavoidable side-effects to the magic she's using right now.

Sure enough, Argento's Sacred Gear shimmers into existence around her arm, and Raynare moves her spare hand directly over it. This time, she doesn't bother intensifying the pulsing aura that surrounds it so Argento can see; she needs all her concentration for something so complex and important.

Her power seeps into the metaphysical spaces between Argento and Twilight Healing, twisting around the anchors that graft it to the girl's soul. The binding is so incredibly tight it might as well not exist - for all intents and purposes, Argento's Sacred Gear and Argento share the same quiddity.

That is why extracting it will kill her. And why she has to die for it to be extracted. Both statements are true - the only way a Sacred Gear can pass from one person to another is by the former's death. Usually, this happens via reincarnation. Someone dies, and their Sacred Gear is reincarnated in the birth of another, be it an hour or a hundred years afterward.

There are ways around this - the Devils certainly have some, given a Sacred Gear shouldn't carry over between the transformation from a human soul into a demonic one. The ritual Raynare intends to use is another. Put simply, it kills the target, forces their Sacred Gear to change hands, and then tricks the system into identifying the target of the reincarnation as the master of the ritual.

In order to do that, Raynare needs to provide it with all the information she can get about Argento's Sacred Gear, and the bonds between the two of them. The ritual is an exercise in finesse, after all. Brute force is useless here.

Several minutes later, the spell dies away. Raynare has what she needs from Argento, for now at any rate. She runs an idle glance down the girl's body; she's panting, and there's a stiffness in her limbs, but that's to be expected. Having your soul, well, probed, isn't exactly _good_ for you.

"Are you okay, Asia?" Raynare asks, the very picture of concern. "It's been a while since the last time I did something like this for a human; I'd forgotten how fragile you can be. If you need time to rest, we can cover our other business later."

Argento makes an admittedly valiant effort to sit up, shaking her head stiffly. "No, no, I'm fine! It wasn't that painful, and it was for my safety, right? So I can't complain."

"If you insist," Raynare says. There is not even a flicker of amusement on her face. "If you do need rest, though, you might be happy to hear what I'm about to tell you. There's a Stray Exorcist on the loose in this city, and he's already attacked the resident Devils once. That's the situation I was talking about earlier.

"Until he's been dealt with, I'd like it if you didn't leave this church. Being human won't save you; the Stray killed a boy just for being in the same area as his fight with one of the Devils, and that was simply a bystander. Someone excommunicated—however unfairly—and with the 'taint' of the Fallen on them, like you?"

Raynare rests a hand on Argento's shoulder, as if in supplication.

"I don't want to see you get hurt by someone like that, Asia. Rest assured it's only temporary; soon he won't be a problem for you—or the rest of us—any more. You understand, right?"

The thing about compulsions is that they're far more effective when the target already intends to follow them. Mittelt has done her part with the wards; it's up to Raynare to convince Argento that her aversion to leaving is because it'd be too dangerous, not any other reason.

Please. If Raynare can't manipulate a sheltered teenaged girl without her realising what's going on, she might as well rip out her wings herself.

Argento looks stricken. Probably over Hyoudou's not-so-permanent death. She seems like the sort of person to care about people she's never met. Though her reaction if she somehow ran into him would be amusing. Even with her kindness, the girl probably wouldn't last five minutes before slapping him and running off. The idea they'd ever get on is inconceivable.

"He can't reach you here, Asia," she says reassuringly. "You're safe. That's what the wards are for, after all."

"If anyone else is attacked, I want to heal them," Argento says eventually, a surprising fire in her eyes. "I don't care if they're humans, or Devils, or anything else. People don't deserve to be hurt."

"I don't like the idea of revealing you to our enemies," Raynare says, "but if it means so much to you, I'll see what I can do."

She lays her other hand gently on Argento's opposite shoulder, and looks her directly in the eyes. Her expression is stern and tinged with worry.

"Promise me you won't go looking for him though, Asia," she says, her voice lowered to intimacy. "I can't protect you if I don't know where you are."

"Okay," Argento replies seriously, "I promise."

 _Good girl_.

"Thank you," Raynare says. It takes everything she has to force the words out, even if her tone is nothing but relieved. "I have matters I need to attend to, but if you need anything while you're here, and I'm away, ask Kalawarner. You'll know her when you see her."

With that, she stands, resisting the urge to use Argento's shoulders to push herself up, and leaves the room.

She has work to do.

* * *

 **My apologies for the delay; it's exam season for me at university, so that cuts into my time quite significantly. With any luck, updates should resume at a somewhat faster pace once that's over.**

 **Yes, Raynare. The Church are obviously behind Freed. Keep thinking that - I'm sure it won't backfire terribly at some stage.**

 **This marks Mittelt's first—and potentially only, I'm not sure—point of view in the story. It's funny - she seems far more reasonable than Raynare, until we get to the casual and habitual violations of free will. Then Raynare plays Asia like a fiddle, and we realise once again that these _aren't nice people._**

 **On a related note, I apologise if Asia seems off. I'm terrible at writing people who aren't rude, misanthropic, or Kallen Kozuki.**

 **Once again, I thank you all for your reviews for the last chapter - after three chapters, I already had people telling me they want to see this Raynare succeed. That means a _lot_. **

**As usual, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to let me know; I'm always open to dialogue.**

 **Many thanks to my beta, Stone Mason, for all his assistance with this chapter.**


	5. Arrogance

The abandoned church is a place of karmic significance. It had once promised safety and succour to the followers of the Lord; it had been a bastion of faith and a symbol of the pact between God and Man. But God is dead, and his children have left this church to rot. The pact has been sundered, torn apart by betrayal.

That makes it the perfect location for a ritual designed to do exactly that: to sunder a God-given gift from a human soul, and transfer it to a more… _deserving_ recipient. It is not a necessary condition, but it will make the process easier, and faster too. It's a good thing, too - the sooner Raynare has Argento's Sacred Gear, the sooner the rest of her plans will fall into place.

Almost idly, she runs the blade of a knife across her forearm. She bleeds, and easily at that, her flesh parting like the sea before Moses. It would seem strange, that a thing like her could be so easily wounded by mundane steel - which is why, of course, that the knife is not steel at all. It is pure orichalum, blessed by the forges of Heaven, and shaped for exactly this purpose.

It is a ritual knife, and one of the few things Raynare still has from her time as an Angel.

She sheathes the knife, and runs the fingers of the hand that held it down the blood-slick wound. This is her essence, her ichor, the physical expression of her quiddity. What else would suffice for a ritual designed to modify exactly that?

Raynare inks sigils into the surface of the cross; they seep into and scar the wood in ways blood should not be capable of. This much can only be done by her - Kalawarner will be along later, to provide the power Raynare will use to seal the room so that none of the sorcery within escapes its confines, but the ritual itself is not something even Mittelt knows.

Once the last sanguine symbol has covered the cross, Raynare takes a moment to study her arm. The cut is visibly closing, but slowly. She'll stop bleeding fairly soon, though the scar won't be gone for hours. It would be a lie to say she's thankful her Fall left her that much, because she shouldn't have Fallen at all. If God had ever been half as kind as the world has been manipulated to believe, the Grigori would not exist, because three-quarters of their number would still live on in Heaven.

There would still be Fallen, and perhaps Azazel would even lead them. But if the Lord had not decided he wanted his chosen soldiers to live as sexless, loveless automatons, most of the Fallen Raynare knows would be no such thing. Herself included.

It is not that Raynare _wants_ to return to Heaven. She does not miss it. Freedom—of life, love, and expression—is worth every price she has paid; every price she will continue to pay until she is naught but dust and ashes. She would not go back even if doing so wasn't a physical impossibility.

But the fact remains that Raynare, and so many of her brethren, should never have Fallen at all. She knew only a single sin, when first she Fell from Heaven. It was not cardinal - it was not even written in the Bible. Raynare was, as pathetic as it sounds, as pure and innocent as you'd imagine an Angel to be, when she crashed to Earth.

Well, except for the all-consuming rage at everyone—herself included—and everything for letting it come to this, of course.

The point is, there have been humans redeemed for far greater evils than Raynare had known existed, all those years ago. Some of them even committed in God's name. Raynare remembers David. She remembers Paul. She remembers Rahab. Why were they granted mercy, and not the Fallen? If the Lord was fair, or benevolent, or anything he is claimed to be, then history would be a very different place.

But He is not. The _world_ is not. And so it comes to this, where Raynare must steal divine miracles from the very creatures she despises to regain a semblance of her former glory. The idea would be demeaning if the irony wasn't so deliciously satisfying. God no longer protects His flock; isn't it fitting, then, that his bastard children rise in his absence to claim what they are owed?

Raynare is not so lost in her ruminations as to miss Kalawarner's arrival; the smells that drift in past her indicate that dinner has been and gone. No matter. She would have refused it even if she'd been offered - and Kalawarner would have expected that.

"Are you done?" Kalawarner asks.

"Everything I can do without your help, yes," Raynare replies.

"Perfect timing, then. What do you want me to do?"

"Sit over there, and try to look pretty." Raynare smirks. "If you can."

Kalawarner scoffs, tossing her hair over her shoulder. It exposes the perfect arch of her neck at the same time as the trailing strands brush across the swell of her breasts. She stalks over to a corner of the room; she does not so much move as _flow_ , all rolling hips and arrogant strut. Rather than sitting, Kalawarner almost collapses to the floor, sliding down in a way that would not look out of place on a pole. Or somewhere else entirely.

She looks up at Raynare through lidded eyes, her lips slightly parted, and in that moment, she is not beautiful. She is _sin_. There are no pretty words and flowery phrases to describe Kalawarner now. When she shifts in place, as if in search of comfort, her knees part slightly - the motion rides the hem of her dress to the tips of her thighs. And then a little further.

It is a show countless others have genuinely paid to see.

Raynare manages to keep a straight face for a couple of seconds before she starts to laugh. Kalawarner soon follows. As so often happens, their amusement plays off each other's, building up and up until the two of them are almost helplessly giggling. Almost, because it is of course impossible that such profound existences as theirs could ever do something so mundanely 'girly'.

Eventually, they quiet, and Kalawarner wipes a tear from the corner of her eye. Raynare, meanwhile, turns to study the walls, mapping her mental model of the necessary seals across it. Some of them must be arranged in a particular order, and the pattern as a whole needs coherency, but most of the complexity is in the individual glyphs themselves and the ability to layer them one on top of another.

That, and providing the necessary spark to bring each one to life. Raynare can do one or the other, but this is magic borrowed from Azazel himself, and the task is beyond her alone. Hence, Kalawarner. She will provide the strength where Raynare provides the skill.

Raynare draws her knife a second time, slicing it down the flesh of her thumb, and tosses it to Kalawarner. The woman catches it with a couple of fingers and twirls it between them, deliberately cutting across her own thumb in the process before passing it back to Raynare as she approaches.

They press the wounds together, and Raynare speaks. The words that roll off her tongue reverberate like gongs, as if they are a slap across the face of the world. Light coalesces around Kalawarner, a yellow somewhere between sunflowers and gold, before rushing into Raynare. Her body shudders, and she can think of nothing else but the joy it brings.

The moment passes, and the corona around the two of them fades. The link has been established.

Kalawarner promptly pulls out one of her Japanese comics—manga, her mind supplies on automatic—and starts reading. Where she was keeping it in her clothes, even Raynare isn't sure. And that says quite a lot, because neither of them dress anywhere near conservatively. Or at all, sometimes.

Shrugging, Raynare returns to her contemplation of the room. It takes her a few more minutes, but she finally figures out where she wants to start. Time to begin.

Light pools around her fingers, and she steps forward until she's standing right before the centre of the wall closest to the cross. It will be the epicentre of the ritual, so she might as well make its vicinity the same for the seals. The correspondence is not particularly strong—nothing like the link between the church and the ritual itself—but it's there, and Raynare would be a fool to ignore it.

Pressing the tip of one elegant finger to the pockmarked stone, Raynare begins to draw. Her eyes are closed, but her movements are sure, and worn smooth by practice. Each rune is flawlessly forged, and the pattern emerging on the wall is would not be out of place in any gallery you'd care to name. Raynare blends magic and art in a way far beyond the reach of mortal men; lost in concentration, she doesn't seem to notice the way her lips slip into something like contentment.

You see, Raynare is a liar. A seductress. She is a creature of deception and illusion, and her sins threaten to outnumber the stars themselves. But that is not the whole of her soul. Any good illusionist is an artist by default - and Raynare is far from merely a _good_ illusionist.

Soon enough, she has covered the wall in a spiralling matrix of symbols from seventeen different languages—three of which no longer exist outside of memory—and moves on to the others. The process takes hours, all told - by the time she is done, the sun is closer to rising than setting.

Raynare takes a deep breath, and exhales, slow and steady. Even if she had provided none of the power, the mental effort required to craft a cage capable of concealing the extraction of a _Sacred Gear_ is by no means inconsiderable. Not for the first time, Raynare marvels at how far beyond her the Lord of the Grigori truly is. Azazel invented three-quarters of the arrays she's used here - and her ward schema is a tenth in size of the one he normally crafts for his _own_ experiments.

Looking around the room, she inspects her work. Everything seems to be in the right place - all that's left is to flick the metaphorical switch. She makes her way back to the wall behind the cross, and approaches the pulsing sigil in its very centre. Gathering power to her fingers, Raynare allows the stark, crimson Light—a mixture of Kalawarner's yellow and her own, bright magenta—to play across the back of her hand, before slamming her palm against the wall.

Her hand sinks into the seal, disappearing up to her wrist despite the fact there is no space between it and the stone behind. Raynare steadies herself, calling on a strength that is not even half her own, and then _twists_ , wrenching the seal from open to closed.

The room shudders as if struck. To Raynare, it is like she has stepped into her own personal thunderstorm - her vision clouds, and her veins burn like her blood has been replaced with lightning. She actually flinches from the thick, grinding _boom_ that shakes the walls even once the initial flare of power fades.

Kalawarner jerks awake from where she'd been lazing, spinning to her feet with a spear snapping into her hand and two more crackling over her shoulders. It is a reaction all the more impressive for how freely she moves - especially if she's anywhere near as drained as Raynare feels right now.

"God, Raynare," Kalawarner says, dismissing the spears with a shake of her head, "you could have at least woken me up first. You know I hate being surprised."

"Sorry," Raynare replies, breathing a little harder than usual, "I just wanted it done. I still have to see how Dohnaseek and Mittelt went with their search, and then I have to deal with the Devils."

It goes unsaid that Raynare is barely capable of standing after performing the sealing. She will not admit that level of weakness, not even to her closest friend. Kalawarner can probably tell—she's far too sharp to miss anything like that—but thankfully, she says nothing.

"Alright," Kalawarner says, shrugging. "I'm going to head back up now, if you want to check over the seals, and make sure everything went the way it should. I'm sure it's perfect, but you know how Mittelt will get if she comes down here to find there's even a single line out of place."

The fact that Kalawarner's suggestion will give Raynare the time she needs to recover her equilibrium is deliberately ignored by both of them. Such a thing could be considered sympathy, and Raynare does not need that from anyone.

But it is a good point, and this is not a time that Raynare can afford any mistakes. Or yet another spat with Mittelt. So, really, it's only logical to take Kalawarner's advice.

"Mittelt doesn't even _know_ most of these seals," Raynare says, "but I'll check it anyway. I have time enough for that, at least."

Kalawarner waves a hand by way of reply, opening the door and heading up the stairs. Raynare, on the other hand, makes her way to the cross - she might as well inspect her work there as well. Argento's Sacred Gear is not something to be risked by misplaced arrogance.

* * *

"So," Raynare asks, some time later, "what do you have?"

She, Kalawarner, Mittelt, and Dohnaseek are all arranged around the kitchen table - it's the only place with enough seats _and_ a flat surface. Not much of a war room, but it's not like the Exorcist deserves one.

"There has been a minor influx of people to the seedier areas of town over the past few weeks," Dohnaseek says, resting his chin on his hands, "but according to the yakuza's timeline, it started before we even knew were coming here. Still a little strange, I'll admit."

"It was the same area I narrowed the Exorcist down to," Mittelt interjects, tracing a glowing circle with her finger around a particular section of the city, "so make of that what you will."

Unfortunately (in Raynare's opinion, anyway), it is not a failure on Mittelt's behalf that she hasn't tracked Sellzen any further than a rough location. The fact she's managed even that is impressive in itself.

"Beyond that," Dohnaseek says, "there's not much to be said. None of my contacts had anything else for me except what I mentioned before, and I didn't exactly want to go wandering into what might be the Church's new territory and give the game away. Or get murdered because there are two Exorcists instead of one."

It's a reasonable decision. Raynare might wish she had more information to work with, but it's clear that the Church are covering their tracks, and as intrigued as she is by the fact they may have initially been here for another purpose, now's not the time to look into it.

Once Argento has been dealt with, she can try and get the Devils to do some the work for her. They _do_ have the larger force and are far more familiar with the area, after all. But at the moment, she just needs anything that will help her convince them it _was_ the Church as opposed to the Fallen who attacked them.

"We still need a way to prove it was the Church to the Devils," she says, almost musingly. "I can argue the point, but I'd like some proof to go alongside it. For my peace of mind if not theirs."

 _Oh. Of course._

Raynare glances at the map, memorising the suburb Mittelt highlighted. Why wait until Argento's Sacred Gear is hers? Give the Devils a location, and tell them to look there if they don't believe her. Naturally, they will, and that'll take care of both the proof and dealing with the Church. And Raynare will have been the one to lead them to their enemies. How convenient!

"Never mind." Raynare does not bother to hide the satisfaction in her voice. "I know what to do."

"Care to share, oh great leader?" Mittelt's sarcasm is a physical thing.

Raynare smiles, in the same way a lion might. "Not right now - I wouldn't want to confuse my _cute little subordinate_ , would I?"

"Is there anything else you want me to do?" Dohnaseek says, his words spilling out little faster than normal. It's almost like he's trying to change the subject.

"Not particularly. I need to drop by the school to talk to the Devils, but the solstice is in less than twenty-four hours. The ritual's more important than anything else, and I think I can get the Devils to do most of the work investigating the Exorcist and the Church anyway."

"Alright," Kalawarner says, "do you want me to come with you? They know I exist now, so it'd be diplomatic to say hello."

Raynare raises an eyebrow. "Do you really want to?"

"Of course not."

"I will introduce you later on, but after they trust me more. Or distrust me less, at any rate. Springing you on them now might send the wrong message - why would I need the added security unless I was concerned about the possibility of betrayal? I'm sure you can follow the implications _that_ would have."

Kalawarner shrugs. "Isn't that what you're for?"

She has a very straight face—the only thing about her that is—but Raynare is long past not being able to understand Kalawarner's sense of humour.

"Glad to be appreciated," she says, and stands, the illusion that is Amano Yuuma falling into place around her as she leaves the room.

* * *

The walk to the school is faster this time; Raynare feels no need to meander. She wants to get in, speak her piece, and get out. This close to the solstice, it's all she can do to stop herself from physically shaking with anticipation. _Soon_ , she thinks. _Soon_.

Unsurprisingly, the Devil's dominion is just as tightly warded as it was the last time she was there; when she crosses the boundary, she can also taste the pulses given off to warn of her arrival. She's expecting to be met by Himejima - though not immediately, because that might make Raynare think they have nothing more important to do than greet her. Even if she's Azazel's 'ambassador', they have far too much pride to allow her to take away that sort of impression.

They'll learn subtlety one day. Maybe.

It is surprising, then, that the first person to meet her is in fact a teacher, inquiring about her absence from school the day before. The need for some sort of excuse slipped her mind at the time; Amano Yuuma is a lie, and one that can be easily replaced. Maintaining the identity has already served its purpose - she's met with Gremory and Sitri.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to keep it a while longer.

A few moments later, the teacher is convinced that Amano Yuuma had a perfectly reasonable excuse for her absence, and that she even made sure to catch up on the coursework she missed thanks to a friend. It's crude work, by her standards - a compulsion, and nothing else.

Ordinarily she'd have done it without sorcery, but that would take more time than she's willing to waste. Besides, imagining the Devil's reaction to the fact she's messed around with the humans technically under their care is amusing. She has to get her entertainment from _somewhere_ , after all.

She strolls through the halls, ignoring the admiring glances of her 'classmates'. Of course she is beautiful. Of course they are looking at her. It would only be worthy of consideration if they weren't.

Sure enough, Himejima appears after a few minutes, crossing Raynare's path in the junction of a pair of hallways with coincidental nonchalance.

"Good morning, senpai!" Raynare exclaims, her voice almost breathlessly eager.

Himejima is obviously amused by the way Raynare's acting, but they're in public, and surrounded by students actually close enough to hear their conversation. Amano Yuuma is a student—ordinary in every way except for her astonishing appearance, grace, and genius—and so she must behave the same way any student of Kuoh would when confronted with one of its Two Great Ladies.

Not that anything about Himejima is particularly great except for the monstrous size of her breasts, but that's beside the point.

"Ah, Amano-san, was it?" Himejima asks, not quite hiding the satisfaction at being _obliged_ to speak down to Raynare. "Now that I remember, Buchou expressed a wish to speak with you at some point. You still need to join a club, yes?"

"I do," Raynare says, her face nothing but excitement and nervous apprehension. The implication of being offered an invitation to join the same club as Gremory would overwhelm any normal girl, so it must do the same to Amano Yuuma.

"Then follow me," Himejima says, turning back the way she came.

Raynare, for want of a better word, obeys. At least Himejima isn't trying to give her the runaround this time, which means she's learned her lesson. That takes a measure of the sting out of being forced to act so subservient.

"Why are you here?" Himejima asks the moment they take a turn into an empty hallway. "Have you come running to us for help in finding the Exorcist?"

Her voice is polite, in the same way it's polite to stab a man in the front instead of the back.

"Oh no," Raynare says, her smile sly and satisfied, "on the contrary - I'm here to help _you!_ We've already found him, you see, and I thought sharing that with your masters would be the magnanimous thing to do. The spirit of cooperation, and all that."

She enjoys the brief surprise in Himejima's eyes. Did the girl really think a group of Devils would have better luck finding an _Exorcist_ than a group of Fallen Angels?

Disregarding the sheer arrogance in thinking their skills would possibly be comparable, Exorcists are first and foremost designed to kill Devils. They are effective against almost everything - but their holy powers are literal anathema to the denizens of the Underworld. It's only natural that Raynare and her allies would be less stymied by an Exorcist's supernatural defences than Gremory and Sitri.

The rest of the walk passes in silence, and soon Raynare is walking into what must be the Occult Research Club's headquarters. It's cute how Gremory thinks she's funny - the _Occult Research Club?_ Seriously?

Noticing the couch, Raynare brushes past Himejima and sits, all glacial grace and perfect poise. She can feel Himejima's eyes on her, even as the girl ignores her, moving to the kitchen to prepare what looks to be tea - conspicuously using only two cups. Raynare's given them irreverence before, and no doubt it'll be what they're expecting from her again.

So naturally she'll provide the exact opposite. There are many reasons she could provide for why: keeping them off-balance, reminding them that she's better at this game than they are, or a desire to prove that she can do quiet competence just as easily as she can do anything else.

But then she'd be lying.

Raynare likes to subvert expectations because it's _fun_. Especially in situations like this, where she doesn't have to pretend to be anyone other than who she is. More fool them if they think she's acting when she's serious _or_ silly; you don't pass your first few centuries without developing a fluid personality, let alone your first few millenia.

If her ears and eyes don't deceive her, Gremory is finishing up in the shower. Good. She doesn't want to waste more time here than she has to.

A couple of minutes later, Gremory steps out, dressed in her school uniform. Raynare has to wonder what the purpose of the display was; there's no way Gremory _just happened_ to be having a shower when Raynare arrived at the school. They surely can't think she's going to be unbalanced by the suggestion of a body—however carnal—behind a curtain, so perhaps it's meant as a sign of how unthreatened they feel by her?

After all, there's not much more vulnerable you can make yourself than having a shower in the same room as a potential enemy.

"So, Amano-san," Gremory says, once she's settled on the opposite couch, "what brings you here?"

Before Raynare can reply, Himejima returns with the tea; she sets a cup in front of Gremory with an almost-careless grace, before pointedly sipping from the other. Raynare would consider pretending to be insulted - if she actually liked tea.

"I'm surprised Sitri isn't here," she says, because she actually is, "but I suppose you can bring my business to her easily enough, so I'll cut to the chase. I've found the Exorcist, and I'm here to share that information."

"Oh?" Gremory tilts her head to the side in exaggerated curiosity. "I'm glad Sona-chan's trust in you wasn't misplaced."

Raynare is almost impressed. A reminder of Sitri's apparent social victory in their last conversation, disguised as a compliment, and delivered that naturally? Gremory's training must have started _early_.

"Given it was your servant who was attacked, I felt it would only be right to let you know. I'm sure you already have plans for how to deal with him, and the Church as a whole, for the slight they've offered you."

Before, she had Gremory's attention. Now? She has her interest.

"I wouldn't take revenge on the Church for the actions of a Stray Exorcist, much as I would hope they wouldn't take action against the Underworld for the actions of a Stray Devil. Your words surprise me, from a woman who is here in the pursuit of peace."

Raynare affects a look of surprise.

"You mean you didn't figure it out? Very well then, I'll explain. Our two groups are here in this city, peacefully coexisting. I walk into the heart of your stronghold and leave unharmed multiple times. To anyone watching carefully enough, _something_ is going on. And given how politically important you and Sitri are, the natural assumption is that obviously that something is also politically important.

"Any situation in which our two Factions cooperate does not bode well for the Church, because the only enemy we share is Heaven, and thereby them. They might not know exactly what's happening, but that doesn't matter: the fact it _is_ happening is enough for them to want to stop it. And what better way to throw a spanner in the works than to frame one of us for attacking the other?"

Raynare can practically hear the cogs in Gremory's mind start to turn.

"Of course Sellzen sounded like a Stray Exorcist. That was the point. The Church have a long history of making use of their fanatics, and there's no way they don't keep a few on hand for exactly situations like this. In most others, it would have worked - they couldn't have known I was expressly here for the cause of peace. It's an astonishingly unlikely explanation, after all.

"They probably planned for you and Sitri not giving me time to explain—especially since you're so young and untested—and just attacking my group out of hand. That would focus your attention on us, and thereby the Grigori, making it easier for them to slip something past your notice. Especially if Sellzen had managed to hurt or kill your Servant - the whole world knows how covetously the Gremory treat what is theirs. And how viciously they will fight to protect it."

Raynare shrugs uncaringly.

"Of course, I don't expect you to believe me just based on my words. I'd be stupid to think you trust me anywhere near that much."

She leans forward, slowly, carefully, and lays a hand on the table. Its surface shimmers with light, before gradually expanding into a map of the city of Kuoh, with a pulsing circle around the area they'd narrowed the Exorcist down to.

Normally Raynare would have done it in an instant, and far more crisply, but she's still in the room with the Lucifer's little sister. Best not to surprise her with any magic she can't see coming, just in case there are any wards she might trigger reflexively.

"That's where we isolated him to. Investigate it on your own, or don't - I don't care. It's up to you."

* * *

There is a room, far on the other side of Kuoh, that is sealed to the outside world. Raynare is no novice when it comes to warding, and Mittelt outstrips her the same way the sun does a candle - but neither of them would recognise a third of the defenses in place here. Azazel himself could walk past it while a nuclear bomb was detonated inside; the walls wouldn't be scratched, and he wouldn't notice a thing.

That is, after all, the point.

You might think that this would be when a mysterious, robed shadow would appear, coalescing out of the ether to lecture its loyal minions from beneath a darkened hood. But that is an affectation of those with far too much time on their hands and more drama than sense.

Kokabiel, the Fallen Star of God, is neither.

The image that stands in the centre of this room is tall, proud, and utterly undisguised. Kokabiel is three thousand miles and four dimensions removed from the vicinity, but his majesty will not be denied. He holds himself like he is the mightiest thing there is, and even from this far away from his physical form, to look at him is to wonder exactly how much of that is due to arrogance as opposed to sheer, overwhelming _power_.

"Freed," he says, his voice ringing like starlight and the sound of dawn, "you know your task."

It is not a question. Kokabiel does not permit his subordinates to forget their orders.

"Yes, Kokabiel-sama!" As always, Freed's voice is just on the creepy side of chipper. "You want me to attack the church, and mess up all the pretty little Fallen."

Before Freed can continue—because that is not the whole of his mission—he flinches, like he's been slapped across the face. Kokabiel's glare is a terrifying thing - his eyes are the same colour as the blood they promise to spill.

"They might be Azazel's misguided servants, but they are _Fallen_ , and they are greater than a wretch like you can ever conceive of being. Do not address them with so little respect."

Freed, a man whose madness is perhaps best measured by the number of corpses it has left in its wake, bows his head in obeisance.

"Forgive me, Kokabiel-sama."

"I will forget this offence if you succeed as I expect you to. Do not attack the church until after Beezlebub's brother has made his move. I will not have my plans jeopardised because someone reports to Azazel that a group of priests and an Exorcist were trying very hard to _not_ kill the Fallen they were fighting."

"I can kill as many of the shitty Devils as I like, though?" It is not necessary to say that Freed's eagerness is disturbing. _Everything_ Freed does is disturbing.

Kokabiel looks at him as if he's stupid. "Of course."

"Thank you, Kokabiel-sama!"

"You have several hours. Prepare your troops, and do not fail me."

The image disappears.

Freed looks briefly annoyed, perhaps by the abrupt dismissal, but soon turns to leave the room as well.

Once he is gone, the air in the centre of the room—in the same place Kokabiel's illusion had just been standing—shimmers briefly before returning to normal.

If Raynare had been there, she would have noted it was just like what happens when an invisible illusion is dismissed - as if Kokabiel had still been there, hidden while he watched Freed's reaction to the end of their exchange.

But she isn't, and so nobody notices at all.

* * *

 **Yo, Kokabiel. Fancy seeing you here.**

 **This chapter gave me no end of trouble. I don't quite know** ** _what_** **it was about it, but it felt like I was forcing every second word out. If it's of inferior quality compared to its predecessors, I apologise; I just needed to get the damn thing** ** _done_** **so I could move on to the parts I've been waiting for.**

 **On Raynare's rant about Falling: though she's presenting a (very) heavily biased view of the situation, there is some truth to her words. Not quite as much as she'd like you to believe, though. You'll see the Church's (and/or Heaven's) side of the story at some point, though I can't promise when. But what I _did_ promise was no bashing, and that means if Raynare gets to rag on Christianity, then Christianity gets an opportunity to show it's not everything Raynare would like you to think it is. **

**Let me tell you, it's a very strange feeling to be writing Kokabiel and Freed Sellzen while listening to Girl's Generation. Though at least** ** _Run, Devil, Run_** **is kind of fitting. (See that joke there? That's why I don't write humour).**

 **He hasn't actually read this chapter as of the time I write this author's note, but he will by the time I publish it, so it would be remiss of me not to thank my beta, Stone Mason, for all his invaluable work!**

 **Thank you once again for all your reviews; I hope this chapter wasn't** ** _too_** **disappointing. Rest assured the next one might actually be interesting, and in the meantime, I'm always open for comments and discussion.**

 **(On a random side note, with this chapter, this story becomes the longest I have ever written)**


	6. Letters From A War

"Wh-what's going on?"

As she wakes, Argento's voice is soft and tremulous. It fits her as a person, Raynare thinks. There are some people who don't sound anything like the way they look; towering soldiers who speak in falsetto, and rotting ghouls who sound as sweet as honey. But if you heard Argento talk, the sort of girl who'd come to mind is the sort of girl she is.

From where she works, Mittelt waves a hand, and Argento slumps unconscious a second time. It's not out of mercy; Raynare couldn't care less whether or not she suffered, and Mittelt would be much the same. The less she resists, though, the easier this will be. If Mittelt hadn't shut her up, Raynare would have.

Argento is tied to the cross; despite how fitting it might have been, actually crucifying her would be going a bit far, least of all because her blood would interfere with the ritual. The ropes are genuine silver, and Raynare has been the only one to touch them. There will be no contamination here - nothing to risk the slightest element of failure.

It is not a lie to say that this ritual will be the most important thing Raynare has ever done, and she will _not_ allow it to be ruined. Not when she's… twelve minutes from success, based on the countdown spell ticking away in the corner of her mind.

Twelve minutes until the winter solstice, and the beginning of her ascension.

Mittelt rises, finished inspecting the fourth and final runic circle around the room. There's one for each of them - Raynare's is directly in line with Argento, in the very centre of the room, and the other three are set at equidistant points across the circumference of the circle transcribed by the radius between Argento and Raynare.

It means that Dohnaseek is standing behind the cross, on the same axis as Raynare. Or, at least, he will be, when it's time for the ritual to begin. For now, he's lounging against the wall next to Kalawarner. The two of them have been discussing football, of all things - a sport Raynare knows nothing about, and doesn't care to either.

Tuning out their conversation, Raynare turns to Mittelt.

"Is everything to your satisfaction?" Raynare knows more about this sort of ritual than Mittelt, but as much as it pains her to admit it, the woman is thrice the sorceress Raynare will likely ever be. In something as important as this, her opinion is… valuable.

Whatever Mittelt was going to say is lost when the whole room shudders, as if struck by its own, personal earthquake. Raynare can feel the magic crackling across her skin; it's the blowback from something, but what?

"What," Dohnaseek asks, "was _that?_ "

Mittelt closes her eyes, only to open them a couple of seconds later, a look of mild concern on her face. Given that Mittelt likes to show any sort of weakness in front of Raynare the same way Raynare likes God, the implications are disturbing.

"That was the first array going down. Nothing major, or particularly deadly, but we've lost all the aversion wards, some structural reinforcement, and most of the surveillance. The magic is odd; what's left of the passive detectors are reading Church techniques, but with Devil power. I'll need more time to figure out exactly what's going on, but we're obviously under attack."

"Stay here," Raynare says, her voice the harsh clip of command. "Shore up the wards, relay what information you can, and _do not let anyone into this room_. Kalawarner, Dohnaseek, with me."

They take the stairs three at a time, Raynare in the lead. When they pass it, the trap-door seals behind them, held down by far more than just physics. She can feel it, now - the slow, crackling whine of the wards pushing themselves to capacity, and the galvanic stutter as they start to fail.

She directs Dohnaseek with a gesture to what amounts to their living room, where Kalawarner stores her laptop - they need to get the word out, and most supernatural attackers remember to ward against teleportation but not against a simple email or phonecall. Those sorts of developments in technology are so recent that there are many who don't even know they exist.

Ordinarily, she would have sent Kalawarner, since it's her property. But this is a battlefield, and that means you send your information specialist to do his job, and keep your best warrior on hand to do hers. Soon they're at the main hall, slipping into cover behind the altar more out of habit than anything else; it won't protect them particularly well.

Raynare can see the attackers through the windows, though they don't appear to have noticed either her or Kalawarner. There are fourteen in total, all dressed like nuns. Iridescent glyphs blur in psychedelic patterns around their bodies; whatever they're doing is eating away at the wards like acid.

In any other circumstance, Raynare would assume they were from the Church. But Mittelt said there was Devil power behind their Church techniques, and Raynare trusts her in that. There is something going on here that Raynare does not understand, and that is the first step to losing the fight. It must be rectified immediately.

"Stay here and cover me," she whispers to Kalawarner.

Raynare rises from behind the altar, and walks to the two great, wooden doors that stand between the hall and the outside world. Her every step is made with the arrogance of millenia, almost exaggeratedly so; her face arranges itself into a mixture of fury and disdain. By the time she reaches the end of the hall, she is the very picture of affronted dignity at those who dare to disturb her work.

She slams the doors open, a spear of light humming in her left hand.

" _What is going on here?_ " she demands.

"Oh, hello!" Another Devil appears, the distinctive tinkling of a shattering illusion dropping around him. Idiot. Why would you reveal yourself to an enemy who doesn't know you're there? He's dressed richly, in clothes whose quality Raynare is mildly jealous of.

It might be a double-bluff—it's notable that the number of Devils Raynare can see is the same amount as there are in a full Peerage, minus one—but Raynare doubts it. The sorts of minds who think of strategies like that are also usually aware it's better to have two surprise attackers than only one.

The Devil is still speaking; his voice is light, almost happy, and it matches the smile on his face. But it is utterly incongruous with his words - or it would be, at least, if Raynare hadn't already noticed the emptiness behind his eyes. He's a handsome youth, of the sort Mittelt prefers, but Raynare likes her men both scruffier and less psychopathic.

"I'm just here to collect my love, Asia Argento," he says, "so if you would kindly lay down and die so that I could be on my way, that would be truly excellent. Thank you!"

"Oh?" Raynare says, tilting her head to the side in exaggerated curiosity. The pale, shimmering arch of her neck outshines the very moon that illuminates it. "You really are a fool."

She takes a single step forward, and does not bother to bat away the fireball thrown at her face by one of his compatriots - it splashes harmlessly against what is left of the wards, which end a foot in front of her. Raynare is many things, but she is not _stupid_.

"Do you know what you have done, boy?" Her voice seeps through the air like poison. "I am Azazel's ambassador to the Underworld, and you have just attacked me in territory that _is not even yours_. Leave now, and I will forget this indiscretion."

Raynare thrusts her spear in his direction the way another woman might thrust a finger; a careful observer would notice it is exactly in line with his heart.

"Remain, and perhaps I will leave enough of you to explain yourself to your Maou - if I am feeling unkind."

For a Fallen like Raynare, the first rule of fighting is _don't_. She's not a warrior, and raw power is not her forte. The fact this Devil is relying on his Peerage to handle the wards instead of doing it himself implies he lacks the strength to punch through them alone, but she and her fellows are still outnumbered fourteen to four.

She flexes her wings in silent threat - all six of them. The space around her shudders with the force of her newly-unleashed power.

The illusion is as flawless as she is.

Raynare can see that he's no longer quite as sure as he was. 'Ambassador' or not, there's no way the Leviathan or the Lucifer would have allowed something like an eight-winged Fallen close to their sisters - but a six-wing is just the right mixture of power and prestige for the task.

And, more importantly, also the right mixture of power and prestige to trash this boy and half his Peerage if he's anywhere near as inexperienced as his actions betray him to be. Especially when backed by what's left of the wards. He has enough information to know Raynare has Argento, and might even be the Devil who got her excommunicated, but Raynare has never displayed her power in public. He can't know that she's not what she claims to be, and the sort of sensor who can judge the difference between a two-wing and a six-wing at a glance would have felt the illusion being cast as well.

"I don't believe you," he says, just on the wrong edge of happy-go-lucky. Confidence resonates through his words. "Devils allying with Fallen Angels? What next - the Underworld making pacts with dragons and the rest of the world's filth?"

Perhaps that confidence would be more believable if he'd made a move to attack alongside it. Raynare's expression is the triumph of an eagle in the moment of the dive; a fierce, savage majesty. This is the world she belongs in, where there is war in the corners of a smile and the only thing more dangerous than a good lie is a better truth.

"If you're so sure, then come, boy. Your precious Argento is right behind me, after all, and the commotion will quickly draw Sitri and Gremory's attention. And that of their siblings, of course. Imagine all the forces you'll have on your side if it turns out that you're right!"

Her pause is as measured as the drawing of a blade.

"Of course, on the other hand, if you're _not_ … well, I'll be the least of your worries."

That rattles him, and she mentally revises her estimates of his age down another few centuries. His face is far too open.

Of course, that is when his peons—who have been casting all the while—finally drop the second array, and the whole church shakes. It's almost cripplingly exposed now; yes, the innermost layer is the toughest, but that doesn't change the fact the first two are already down.

It does wonders for the Devil's confidence, if the way he straightens is any indication. He must be desperate for Argento to still think of challenging Raynare, even after everything she's said and pretended to be. Though with only one layer left, the fight will soon be more in his favour than hers - and that's if she was the six-wing she's claiming to be.

His Peerage will breach the remaining wards soon, no matter what Mittelt does to delay them. Raw power is, unfortunately, the great equaliser. Raynare can't act to stop them without revealing she's been lying about what she is, but just letting them carry on has far worse consequences.

The tension is electrifying.

"Congratulations, you broke a ward layer," she says, her voice edged with derision. "Do you really think that changes anything? The more power you burn, the more obvious this will be to everyone in the vicinity. Do you really think you can break in here, smash past me and every one of my comrades, and get out with your little prize before someone arrives who knows your face?"

Raynare scoffs, waving a hand in the general direction of his clothes.

"You're a noble, kid. I could tell just from the accent, let alone the garb. And I'd hazard a guess you're not much older than baby Sitri. An heir, then. Azazel wouldn't want me to fuck up this alliance by killing a noble's brat, even if it'd honestly be doing your race a service given how stupid you must be to have thought this was a good idea.

"So stop thinking with your cock, and scram. I don't know who you are, but Gremory and Sitri will. The moment they get here, you're fucked, and not in the fun ways. You're out of your league, and I'm almost out of patience. Choose wisely."

Her wings—both real and illusionary—flex, and light begins to coalesce around her spear. It's just magelight, all tricks and starstuff - but to the inexperienced eye, it looks just like she's charging it with _real_ power.

Indecision wars on his face. He doesn't want to believe her, but he's not God. Reality won't change just because he refuses to accept it the way it is. Raynare shifts her weight from one leg to the other - a gesture of impatience. Body language is as important as any other when it comes to manipulation.

Naturally, the moment he's about to back down is also the moment everything goes completely wrong.

The first sign is when a barrage of bullets rip through one of the noble's Peerage; her barriers collapse like splintering glass, and her body soon follows. She doesn't have time to scream. The rest, however, do - out of outrage, or fear, or anguish, Raynare doesn't know or care. They spin toward the shadows, shields sparking into view and magic coiling around their fingers. It's the only thing that saves them when priests pour out of the darkness—somehow concealed even from Raynare's eyes—led by a man who matches the description of the Exorcist that had Gremory in such a tizzy.

There's three priests for every Devil, and the Exorcist is making a beeline straight for the noble. Where in God's name did they all _come from?_ There's no way the Church could have known what the Fallen were planning, and even if they had, why would they attack now to get at Argento, instead of in the days prior? Why would they attack at all, when they were obviously planning to try and set Fallen against Devils, not unite them against the Church?

It makes _no sense_ , and that worries her. Enemies who don't make sense are one of two things: crazy, or acting on levels beyond your understanding. Raynare isn't quite sure which one is worse.

The distraction of her thoughts almost costs her. She's a Fallen Angel, making her home in a church. She's as heretical as any Devil, and no priest worth their cassock is going to let her stand there idly watching the fight. So they don't.

At the last second, Raynare tilts her head to the side, and three bullets sear past her ear like streaks of starlight. They wouldn't have killed her— _Light magic against a Fallen?_ _Please_ —but they would have broken her nose, and that sort of insult Raynare simply cannot allow.

"You _dare?_ " she snarls, her face twisting with rage to cover the shame of almost being struck by something as pathetic as a human. She dismisses her illusions; the noble is too focused on not dying to the Exorcist, and she can't fake being a six-wing in actual combat. But she doesn't need to be. Not for this.

Raynare explodes off the ground, launching herself forward with a vicious beat of her wings. There is more violence in that single motion than on the rest of the battlefield combined. She spirals toward the priest who shot at her, a spear of light vibrating in her hand. It sounds like somebody taking a chainsaw to the universe.

The priest reacts slowly, compared to a Fallen at least, but still manages to trace a cross over his chest. A shield of divine power snaps into being between them, as bright and beautiful as a sunrise.

It does absolutely nothing to save him when the real Raynare's light-spear takes him in the throat from his unprotected side. The spear cooks the meat as much as it pierces, but Raynare is long used to the smell of the dying.

The body collapses, and so does the magic Raynare has wrapped around herself. One illusion to give the priest what he expected, and another of the world behind her. She's already moving, skipping back to the relative safety of the wards to survey the battlefield.

As she repositions—it's not a retreat, because that would imply she's worried instead of practical—Kalawarner joins her from inside the church, three spears singing through the sky even as she prepares the fourth. None of them are aimed at the Devils - Kalawarner's not an idiot, and she'd have heard Raynare's every word.

Regrettably, as much as she might like to, Raynare can't just leave the noble to die. It would do so much for her cause if she were seen to save a Pillar's heir, especially one who had threatened her when they first met. Devil pride would force them to be as magnanimous as she had been - after all, if a lowly, dirty Fallen can shelve old grudges, surely the mighty, honourable Devil nobility can too.

Unfortunately, he's already lost one arm to Sellzen, and looks a single mistake away from losing his head. The man is _good_ , even for an Exorcist, and the Devil boy is so far out of his league she has to suppress a laugh.

 _Time to even the score_.

"Keep them pinned down," she says. "I'll deal with the Exorcist."

Kalawarner hurls a spear that skims over one of the Devil nun's shoulders on its path through a priest's head.

"Boom," comes the deadpan reply, "headshot."

Raynare snickers, tossing herself back into the fray.

* * *

Hyoudou Issei has dealt with a great many things over the past few days.

He has died and been born again. He has been invited to the Occult Research Club. He has found out that every supernatural belief he's ever had—that he's ever heard of—is real. He has learned that he is now a Devil, and a member of a Peerage.

He has _seen Buchou's breasts_.

Right now, though, even that is far from his mind. Issei is not so blind that he cannot tell when someone is worried, and if Buchou and Kaichou's faces are any indication, there is something wrong. They're poring over whirling sigils and what looks like a map of Kuoh made of light. It pulses a deep, angry red in one particular section, near the old Christian church.

"We have to investigate," Buchou says. "You know we do, Sona-chan."

"Of course," Kaichou says, inclining her head. "But all of us, Rias? If this is a trap, we give them exactly what they want."

"It's not just the Fallen." Did Issei mention that Angels were real, and that they can Fall? Because that's a thing. "It was Devil sorcery that tripped that intrusion ward. Someone else is here. You and I need to greet our… guest, and that means we need a welcoming committee alongside us."

Kaichou pauses, thinking. "Very well. As Sirzechs-sama's sister, you should take the lead here - this is a domestic affair. I will continue to handle discussions with the Fallen, once we establish the situation. But we are not going in there blind - you and Akeno should send your familiars in first. We need to know if we'll be teleporting into a trap, a warzone, or a friendly game of chess."

"Of course," Buchou says. Issei can't feel the magic that boils off her, even though he's only on the other side of the Student Council's room, but he can see the circle that forms before something springs out of it. On closer inspection, it's a small, cartoonish bat, similar in size to the imp that Akeno-san summons.

Buchou opens a window, and the bat—her familiar, if Issei's remembering correctly—flutters out, followed by Akeno-san's imp. They quickly disappear into the distance, and Buchou returns to the map. The waiting is boring, but Issei promised Buchou he would act as an 'honourable representative of the Gremory clan' when she first learned that he might be required to meet Kaichou and _her_ Peerage.

Issei is not a man to go back on his word. No matter how much he might want to. Because seriously, all this standing around is about as interesting as that yaoi manga he accidentally saw while browsing one time. Why would anyone want to read something that isn't about girls?

(It should be noted at this point that Issei, in many ways, could be called a champion of male homosexuality. His logic is simple: the more men that get together, the more women there are left for him).

Suddenly, Buchou stiffens, at the exact same moment as Akeno-san.

"We have to go _now,_ Sona-chan," she says. The concern in her voice is blatant. "The Fallen are under attack by the Church, and for some reason Diodora is there too. He and Amano-san are fighting the Exorcist who attacked Koneko-chan and killed Issei-kun!"

Amano-san being, of course, Amano Yuuma, who turns out to have transferred into Kuoh from a little further than just another _school_. Not that Issei is particularly concerned about that - he's more worried about the Exorcist.

Well, worried is the wrong word. More like furious.

Issei's going to punch him in the face. He might even break one of his rules—the one about threatening another man's pride and joy—and kick him in the junk as well.

Oh, sure, the Exorcist killed Issei too. But that's not important. He hurt Koneko-chan. He tried to _kill_ her.

Issei is looking forward to returning the favour.

"Rias?" Kaichou asks, her body already glowing with power. Buchou reaches over and grabs her hand, and her radiance soon outshines even Kaichou's - though, in Issei's eyes, that's nothing new.

"Everyone, be ready!" Buchou calls, as circles of unholy light stretch across the floor. To Issei, the combined power of the room's two Devil Kings feels like somebody's wrapping bands of steel around his skin. It's not uncomfortable, but there's a physical _weight_ to their strength he can't ignore.

In a flash—quite literally—the Student Council room disappears, to be replaced by an empty street Issei recognises as the one just before the turn-off for the church. Almost immediately, Buchou, Akeno-san, and Kaichou take to the air, their wings exploding from their backs.

"Everyone else, follow us on foot. We'll be coming from behind the fight, so the battlefield will be between us and the church. Remember, the further away you stay from it, the better: it'll sap your strength, and we don't know what remain of the Fallen's wards either."

Buchou seems in her element now; her voice rings out into the night, and Issei is briefly reminded of that odd English phrase about the woman whose face launched a thousand ships. She couldn't have been half as beautiful as Buchou, he thinks.

Or a third as well-endowed.

He sprints along the street, Kiba—that damn handsome makes it seem effortless—to his left and Koneko-chan to his right. The members of Kaichou's Peerage are arrayed around them, with Tsubaki-san leading the charge. Where did she pull that naginata from?

Within moments, they reach the church.

" _What is going on here?_ " Buchou's words echo across the battlefield, and she punctuates them with a blast of _something_ , which obliterates the earth in a wide swathe beneath her. It was like she'd ripped the blood out of a man's veins, and wrapped it in the night around her; Issei's eyes hurt just from looking at it.

"About time you arrived!" someone shouts, and for a moment Issei thinks it sounds like Amano-san - if she'd aged ten years and taken lessons from all the seiyuu in all his favourite games.

Nobody has stopped fighting with their arrival; cloaked men dressed like Catholic priests still swarm a cluster of nuns, and Tsubaki-san charges toward them, most of her fellow Pieces following her in a wedge. Koneko leaps over their heads, slamming into a priest's back with an ugly _crack_ \- Issei isn't sure whether it was the man, or the ground beneath him.

It might have been both.

Kiba almost disappears from Issei's eyes; he accelerates so quickly the loose ends of Issei's clothes actually tremble in his wake. He's running the same way Issei's looking - towards where the Exorcist is engaged with yet another pretty-boy, and a woman who could be Amano Yuuma's older, sexier sister.

Which means she's probably actually Amano Yuuma herself, given the raven-feathered wings that propel her up into the sky and over the Exorcist's blade. She flows through the air like liquid - Issei can barely rip his eyes away from the way her calves tense and her skirt rides up around her thighs as she kicks the man in the face, sending him stumbling back almost a metre.

Seriously, is every single woman in the supernatural world at least an 11 out of 10 on Issei's scale?

...maybe he shouldn't kick the Exorcist in the balls after all, if this is what Freed Sellzen has inadvertently introduced him to.

Issei still owes him a broken jaw regardless, so he's quick to follow after Kiba, who almost shoves the other Devil—he must be that 'Diodora' Buchou was talking about—out of the way in his haste to reach the Exorcist. Now that Issei looks closer, Diodora seems to be missing a hand, and there's blood splattered across his chest as well.

Something whistles over his head, and out of the corner of his eye, Issei notices a lance of burning gold—like someone had ripped out a piece of the sun and thrown it—tear through a priest's back as the man goes flying from one of Koneko-chan's punches.

By the time he arrives at the fight, though, it's already over. The Exorcist has backed off, well out of range of Kiba's swords, and is watching them with an amused smile. Issei wonders if he'll still be smiling when he has no teeth.

"Oh, you're alive!" the man says, as if nothing in the world makes him happier. "I've never gotten to kill someone twice before - and now you're a shitty Devil, so it'll feel even better! The Lord is so kind to his faithful servants."

"You attacked Koneko-chan, you bastard," Issei replies, seething with fury. He's so angry it feels like his arms are on fire. "I'm going to kick your ass."

The one who laughs is not, in fact, Freed Sellzen.

"You are as stupid as you look, aren't you, Hyoudou?" Amano Yuuma says, still trembling with amusement. Even her scorn is stunning. "That's an Exorcist. You're two hundred years too early to put a scratch on him without a whole Peerage behind you. You and Kiba combined wouldn't last ten seconds."

Light coalesces in her hand, the colour of cherry blossoms, or the earliest moments of a sunrise.

"Go look after that noble brat before he bleeds out. You'll only get in my way."

Freed Sellzen opens his mouth to speak, and then the air around him explodes. That's the only way Issei can really describe it - lightning screams from the sky like the fist of a god, framing the wound in the world that is Buchou's power as it smites the Exorcist from on high.

When the smoke clears and the harsh tang of ozone fades, the slagged hilt of his sword drops into the crater where he was standing with a dull thunk.

A couple of metres away from it, Freed Sellzen looks up at the sky, down at the broken earth, and back up again.

"That was close," he says. "Really, for a bunch of Devil trash, I'm impressed. This day just keeps getting better and better!"

A literal serpent made of water lunges at him from behind, its mouth open as wide as Issei is tall - and then some. The Exorcist spins in a motion that has no true beginning or ending; one moment he is facing Issei, and the next his fist is crashing into the serpent's jaw, pulsing with energy like the heart of a star.

The serpent _disintegrates_ , exploding into a cloud of steam, and Freed Sellzen splays out his hand, studying his fingernails as if making sure none of them were chipped.

 _What the hell._

"Three out of ten for effort, minus infinity for being a filthy heretic. Seriously, shitty Devil-chan, has your sister not been fucking you enough? Don't worry, I can fix that. If the screams are any indication, my technique is to die for!"

In his quest to find the perfect hentai, Issei has seen many things he'd rather forget. Things no man was meant to see.

None of them, he thinks, disgust him half as much as Freed Sellzen.

One of Sona's Peerage seems to agree with him—Saji, perhaps?—if the way he charges the Exorcist is any indication. Not that he gets very far - Tsubaki-san pulls him back by his collar before he can rush the man. The rest of Kaichou's Peerage make their presence known shortly after; they've spread out in a semi-circle around the front of the church, cutting off the Exorcist's retreat.

Briefly, Issei wonders what happened to all the priests, if so many Devils are no longer fighting.

A quick glance over his shoulder tells him a lot more than he wanted to know.

"Well," Freed Sellzen says, looking around at the assembled Devils, "this is awkward. Normally I'm the one doing the gangbanging."

A spear of golden light hisses through the air, straight at his head, and this time he dodges to one side.

"Do you ever shut up?" asks a low, throaty voice. "The last time I saw this much shit pour from someone's mouth, I'd just shoved a sword up their ass."

Next to Issei, Amano Yuuma laughs, her chest shaking with mirth.

 _Wow. That is some_ serious _bounce_.

"This has been fun, and just thinking about how agonizing your deaths are going to be is making me all hot and bothered, but for now, ja ne!"

In a blur of motion, Freed Sellzen pulls something out of one of his pockets, and tosses it straight at the ground near Issei. It looks a lot like a grenade, except it's covered in crosses. The Christian kind, that is.

It bounces once, popping up directly in front of his face.

 _Huh_ , Issei thinks, _it actually is a holy hand grenade_.

Acting on instinct, he tries to catch it before it goes any further. His hand-eye coordination has never been the best, but his Devil body is far superior to his old one, and it's almost too easy to reach out and pluck it out of the air.

It is only then he realises what he's done.

For a moment, there is silence.

Then a very quiet _click_.

Buchou screams his name.

The last thing Issei feels is the fire consuming his body.

It starts with his left arm.

* * *

Raynare is moving as soon as she sees the grenade - the ground cracks beneath her feet as she hurls herself backward to the safety of the church, and more importantly what remains of its wards.

Let Hyoudou die a heroic idiot—is it really heroism if it's an accident?—to save the rest of the Devils. Azazel told her to make sure he didn't go crazy because his Sacred Gear activated while he was still mortal.

Well, one out of two ain't bad.

Behind her, she hears the roar of the grenade going off. It shakes the world like thunder. Heat scorches the tips of her wings as she crosses the ward line, and she crinkles her nose at the stench of burning flesh. Just because she's used to it doesn't mean she _likes_ it.

When she turns around, the dust has cleared.

And Hyoudou is still standing.

"What the _fuck?_ " The words slip out before she can control them.

His body is blackened, most of his clothes and even his eyebrows have been burned away, and he's swaying in place, but he just took a grenade filled with holy Light point-blank.

 _There shouldn't be anything left of him at all_.

Almost against her will, her eyes are drawn to the gauntlet on his left hand. It covers his arm to the elbow - a bright, shining crimson flecked with gold, like it's been forged from fire rather than metal. The gem in the centre—a glittering emerald almost the size of Hyoudou's palm—glows like the heart of a star, the same colour as the sparks that pour from his body in an endless rain of crystallised power.

There are scorch marks across its talons.

 **Reset.**

The words are not so much spoken as _felt_.

The gauntlet loses its glow, and Hyoudou collapses to the floor.

Raynare turns her head toward Kalawarner, her voice a quiet whisper.

"That's not Twice Critical, is it?"

Slowly, Kalwarner shakes her head. "No. No it isn't."

* * *

 **I promised a great number of people, including myself, that this chapter would finally resolve Asia's situation.**

 **That, it turned out, was a mistake. Raynare and Diodora got away from me, and then Freed got away from me, and then so did Issei. So I had to make the choice between cutting it here, or writing another four to five thousand words and extending the break between chapters another month.**

 **Well, you know what** _ **I**_ **chose.**

 **Moving on, things we learned this chapter: Raynare's bluff check is scary. The Power of Destruction is scary. Freed Sellzen is scary.** _ **Issei**_ **is scary.**

 **Apologies to Spectrum, if you're still reading, for not being able to (hopefully) demonstrate that Raynare is still Raynare like I expected to. If you'll bear with me for another half a chapter, I think you might be satisfied.**

 **Apologies also to all of you for the wait. Sometimes I've been busy. Other times I've just been god damn lazy.**

 **Many thanks to Eno Remnant, who filled in for Stone Mason in beta-reading this chapter since the latter was unavailable.**

 **Apart from that, I hope you enjoyed this offering; as always, I'm available for questions, comments, and general discussion.**

 **I may have missed replying to some of your reviews to the last chapter. That will not happen again.**


	7. Happy Endings

On another day, Raynare might have been amused by the way Gremory abandons all decorum to rush to Hyoudou's side. She's one of the closest things the Devils have to a princess, but here she is, dirt on her skirts and panic on her face as she presses her hands against his exposed chest, just above his heart. Devil healing works best through skin contact, after all.

Right now, though, even Raynare's wit has temporarily abandoned her. It takes a _lot_ to shock someone as old as her. She is by definition an existence beyond the laws of nature; there are things she has seen that history no longer records.

Coming face to face with the awakening of the Red Dragon Emperor, however?

Well, that'd certainly do it.

She turns her attention from Hyoudou to the rest of the battlefield, electing to deal with the situation when her brain has finished processing it. Another person might have mistaken the gesture for concern over the other fighters - but Raynare is more worried about making sure that impudent little noble brat is down for the count. The last thing she needs is him making a fuss about Argento before she's dealt with.

Argento.

 _Argento_.

"Amano-san," Sitri says, walking carefully around Hyoudou and Gremory, "I believe we should discuss what has occurred here - but perhaps after we have all recovered from the events."

Inside Raynare's head, a clock strikes midnight. It rings out in twelve long strokes, each one echoing like a thunderclap.

The solstice has begun.

Raynare has been a creature of deception for longer than some languages have had words for the concept. She has lied, straight-faced, under torture. In the throes of orgasm. To God Himself.

As the alarm that blares her failure continues to beat like a hammer against her skull, Raynare almost, _almost_ breaks. Her limbs still. Her smile becomes a scar, slashed across her cheeks. Her fingers twitch, curling like the talons of a vulture.

"Is… is there a problem with that?" Sitri asks.

"Oh, no," Raynare says, quite politely, "everything is fine."

"We'll take care of the priests' bodies," Kalawarner interjects quickly, "but we'll leave the Devils to you."

Kalawarner gestures to the noble's unconscious form, surrounded as it is by what's left of his Peerage. The fear on their faces would be delicious if Raynare could bring herself to care.

"Though we'd appreciate an explanation as to how that little shit got here and attacked us, once you've had some time to ask him questions of your own."

"Naturally," Sitri says. "Rest assured we will investigate the matter with the thoroughness it deserves."

The translation being, of course, that they'd only throw one of their own to the Fallen if they had no other choice.

"Very well," Raynare says, her voice as sweet as kissing. "Will that be all?"

Given that Gremory has already started making preparations for a teleportation circle, the answer seems obvious.

"We'll contact you tomorrow to make arrangements," comes Sitri's reply.

"As you say." Raynare turns, heading back into the church. The sounds of Sitri ordering her Peerage to collect the Devils who fell in the ambush echoes over her shoulder, Kalawarner by her side.

The door clicks shut, sealing them from the outside.

And then she rips one of the pews from the floor, and hurls it at the altar. It's taller than she is and thrice her weight, but the ease with which she throws it is matched only the glee with which it splinters on impact, shattering into broken wood and sawdust. Her whole body is shaking, and Kalawarner, who can manhandle Raynare the same way Raynare did the pew, backs away a couple of steps.

Raynare's rage is something so dark, so terrible, that not even she can make it beautiful. The venom in her snarl—as she slams a foot into and _through_ another pew, cracking the wood like bone—could kill a man, and the rest of her expression makes it clear she'd do anything for the chance.

Dohnaseek pokes his head in from the end of the hall - perhaps because of the commotion, or perhaps to inform Raynare he'd managed to contact Azazel about the attack. The moment he sees her face, he turns tail and retreats.

(Dohnaseek has been happily married for centuries. It's moments like this that explain why).

"Fuck God. Fuck the Church. Fuck the Devils. Fuck this _whole fucking world_."

Raynare curses like a fire spitting sparks, switching through languages to make each piece of profanity even more impressively vile than its predecessor. By the time she circles back to Enochian, some even have physical effects - one sets the altar she's glaring at on fire, and another makes blood leak from the walls.

The last is a word that Angels cannot even _say_ without Falling, and Raynare punctuates it with a spear of light that impales the altar right in what's left of the cross.

The silence is broken only by the way she pants for air, each breath as harsh as her expression.

Eventually, Kalawarner speaks.

"Are you done?"

Her voice is soft, but it isn't gentle. Raynare whirls on her, every inch of the motion as sharp as a knife, and her eyes still molten with fury. This time, Kalawarner does not back down.

"We still have Argento," she says, "and we have a day until the Devils come back. Even if you and Mittelt can't figure out a way to continue the ritual without the help of the solstice, there's time to send her off to Azazel before anyone else can stop us. Our victory hasn't been stolen, Raynare. Only delayed."

Raynare opens her mouth, pauses, and then her jaw shuts with the click of colliding teeth.

She takes a deep breath and sighs, too heavily to be just an expulsion of air.

"You're right," she says, her lips curling downward as if the admission pains her. "Come with me. I need to talk to Mittelt."

Raynare strides across the room, her every step striking the floor just a little _too_ hard to be accidental. She passes Dohnaseek sitting in front of Kalawarner's laptop, but doesn't stop to see what he's doing. It's not important. Apparently Kalawarner thinks the same, since she passes him without comment.

They reach the trapdoor, and Raynare opens it with a yank of the metaphorical doorknob, her hand sunk halfway into what should be the wood. She pulls her arm out and the trapdoor up in the same motion, flinging it open so roughly she almost tears it off its hinges, and walks down the stairs. Kalawarner is close behind.

"Where the Hell have you been?" Mittelt snaps as they come into view. "I hope you don't think you're here to perform the ritual. It's too late for that."

"Sorry," Raynare replies, her tone as biting as a whip, "I was a little busy bluffing the full fucking Peerage that wanted to make off with Argento into backing down, and then fighting off the Exorcist-and-forty-priest ambush that came right afterward. Oh - did I mention that Gremory and Sitri arrived toward the end, and that it turns out that Hyoudou is the _Red Dragon Emperor?_ "

She shrugs, liquid like poison.

"But sure, blame me. See how far that gets you."

Mittelt blinks.

"Seriously?"

"Do I look like I'm fucking _laughing_?"

"Well then," Mittelt says, her expression just a little too blasé for Raynare to believe, "I guess we'd better start packing up the girl to send her off."

"No! Not yet. The problem is we don't have the strength to break the connection between Twilight Healing and Argento except by killing her outright. We can still do it here, we just need more energy."

The ritual is an exercise in precision, not power. But severing a Sacred Gear from a soul is no easy feat, no matter how cunning the knife. That is one of the reasons Raynare had planned to rely on the winter solstice.

The very presence of sunlight weakens Devils, because sunlight is holy. Of course it is - it comes from the Sun, one of God's most magnificent creations. It follows, then, that the less sunlight a day receives, the less holy it is. Therefore, the winter solstice—having the longest night and shortest day—receives the least sunlight, making it the least holy day by definition.

Even though God is dead, it is still His strength that governs the Sacred Gear system, and that means it is at its weakest when He is: on the winter solstice.

However, by itself, that isn't enough. God's final legacy to mankind is more robust than that. Which is why Raynare wanted the sympathetic resonance from the _turn_ of the solstice as well. The symbolism of performing a ritual to steal one of God's gifts on the stroke of midnight, when the Sun—another one of those gifts—is furthest from the sky, and the time He is at His weakest has just begun… well, to say that it would have been incredibly beneficial was an understatement.

Unfortunately, that chance is lost. The solstice still remains, and the dawn is far from coming, but Raynare lacks the one, final trump that would have tipped the ritual over the edge. What she needs now is something to replace it.

"Where are we going to find that?" Mittelt asks. "We can't recruit anyone else, because there's nobody strong enough to give us the power who'll also consent to letting _you_ keep the Gear rather than taking it for themselves or demanding it be handed off to Azazel instead. I don't think you have any storage gems lying around, and we can't exactly harness the Sun either; that'd cancel out the whole benefit of doing it at night."

Her brows furrow.

"Hell, we can't even go Aztec and use human sacrifice - we don't have enough time to arrange disappearances that the Devils can't trace back to us, if we even could. Who knows what the Leviathan has done to this city."

Raynare goes very, very still.

 _Of course_.

"Kalawarner! Check the priests. See if any are still alive. Bring them back if they are. Get Dohnaseek to help. Go!"

Kalawarner is turning away—tossing herself up the passageway and toward the trapdoor with a single leap—by the time Raynare is halfway through the sentence.

There had been well over three-dozen priests; probably actually more than the forty Raynare tossed out as an estimate to Mittelt. The Devils wouldn't have had the time or opportunity to kill every single one of them straight-up - just taking them out of the fight so they could move on to the next would have been enough. In the grand scale of things, it wouldn't matter if they bled out now or in half an hour, just that they didn't get in the way.

It was sound battlefield strategy - but Gremory and Sitri's youth and inexperience betrayed them in the way they didn't go around and make sure all the priests were dead _after_ they'd won the fight. It is the same way Raynare's rage betrayed her - because she should have done that before anything else, just like Kalawarner had assured the Devils that they would.

Raynare has never been more thankful for a mistake in her life.

Only a few minutes later, Kalawarner and Dohnaseek return, each with a body flopping over either shoulder. Before they can set them on the floor, Raynare motions for her comrades to stop - she needs to modify the ritual first to accommodate the new additions.

She moves to the middle of the room, where the runic circle she will command the ritual from glows with a steady light. The design is oddly organic, like a four-dimensional fractal interpretation of a flower. Taking up a position directly south from the centre—on the same line that runs from the centre of the circle to the cross where Argento slumps, still unconscious—she draws her Light from beneath her skin. It pools across her palm like blood, and she uses it to etch a set of glyphs into the floor, scorching holes into the stone with nothing but her fingertips.

The moment Raynare finishes, she rotates to the west, and repeats the process until there is a new sub-circle at every cardinal point. Mittelt follows on her heels, inspecting every sub-circle as it's drawn, but doesn't find fault with any of them.

"Just leave them on the stairs," Raynare says, rising from the floor with sultry grace after she draws the fourth and final circle, "and don't touch them again after I do."

Kalawarner and Dohnaseek don't quite drop the soon-to-be-corpses, but they certainly don't handle them gently. One knocks his head against the stone, and a deep groan echoes along the staircase. It's amusing how fragile humans are.

As she walks over, Raynare studies the priests; one of them looks more aware than the others, so he'll have to be the first. She will not be interrupted by anything else, not even the futile struggles of a doomed man. She crouches beside him, tearing open his cassock with her fingers before resting one hand directly over his heart. The other settles on his forehand, palm pressed flat against his skull.

She begins to chant. It sounds like she's singing - each lilting word rings out as clearly as a bell, and the subtle beauty of Enochian as a language wouldn't be out of place in opera. Considering she's speaking of murder, death, and sacrifice, the comparison is only more fitting.

On the priest's forehead, her hand begins to glow, and ethereal lines of energy stretch across the man's skin, tracing along his veins until his whole circulatory system is ablaze with light. Her chanting reaches a crescendo, and he begins to struggle weakly beneath her grip, like she's lit a fire inside his bones.

Then Raynare shoves her other hand straight through his chest and rips out his heart.

Blood sprays all across her body, splattering her face and leaking down from her chin, but she makes no effort to remove it. Instead, she returns to the first of the sub-circles, carefully balancing the still-beating heart in her grip, and places it down.

Her hand sinks into the floor, the heart within her grip; when she withdraws, she's no longer holding it. The circle, however, starts to pulse to the same beat as the heart when Raynare first tore it out.

A few minutes later, there are four corpses tossed on the stairs like discarded toys, a hole where each of their hearts are supposed to be. Raynare stands in the middle of the main runic circle, framed from below by the glow of each sub-circle; they all pulse at slightly different rates, dappling her skin with light.

Dohnaseek stands behind the cross on which Argento hangs, in line with Raynare, and Kalawarner and Mittelt take up their positions on either side. The glyphs beneath their feet are a bright, shimmering green, the same colour as Argento's Gear in action.

For the first time since midnight struck, Raynare permits herself to smile.

"After all these years," she says, "after everything we've lost and everything we've suffered, we're finally going to _win_ something."

She tilts her head to the roof—and the sky beyond it—and throws her arms up in a mockery of supplication.

"Can you hear me, Lord? Can You see me through the shattered fragment of Your soul that You decided this girl was more worthy of than any of Your children? I hope, wherever it is that gods go to die, that You can. And I hope You understand that _this is what You forced us to become._ "

Raynare drops, lowering her arms to press them against the floor inside her circle, and the others mirror her. Once again, she calls on her Light, on every fraction of her strength that she can summon. It surrounds her body in a corona of power, as bright and furious as the dawn. Each subcircle starts to pulse faster and faster, until they might as well be permanently aflame.

She stands, moving so slowly it's like she's struggling to lift the sky itself, and the aura around her continues to grow until it threatens to outshine the very stars in heaven. She slams her palms together—the noise echoing through the unnatural silence like thunder—and the subcircles explode, four columns of blazing light that warp and twist through space to centre on her hands.

Then Raynare starts to _pull_ , her arms trembling and the expression on her face close to rapture. Argento's eyes snap open, and she starts to scream. There is not a single person left in the room who cares. The girl howls in agony - no words, no pleading, no begging, just raw, unadulterated _pain_ as Raynare rips out a part of her soul.

Between Raynare's fingers, now almost a inch apart, something coalesces. It's translucent, almost ghostly, but the shape can be seen: a pair of rings, perfectly sized for the fingers of a young woman.

Her smile is as wide as it's ever been.

This is _it_.

This is the moment of her ascension.

With one final, straining heave, Raynare's hands separate to the width of her shoulders. Argento is beyond screaming, now; her breath comes in hoarse, stuttering gasps, and her body is slumped against the ropes that hold her to the cross.

There is a harsh, vicious crack, halfway between splintered ice and splintered bone, and the hovering rings snap into being. Bright, glinting silver, tipped with gems that ripple between colours like the surface of the ocean. They hang for a moment, and then start to drop.

Raynare snatches them so quickly her hands do not seem to pass through the intervening space.

She opens her palms, holding the rings up to her face; for all their glory, even the jewels cannot match the beauty of her eyes. With a reverence that is almost ironic, given the situation, she slides them onto her left hand; one ring onto her pinky finger, and the other, fittingly, on her ring finger. They're a little too loose at first—not enough to slide off, but certainly not a perfect fit—but they immediately shrink a fraction, until they are so tight to her skin it's just shy of painful.

At first, she does nothing but bring her hand back in line with her gaze, turning it slowly back and forth to study the rings. Raynare looks at them like they're the most fascinating things in the world - like she could stare at them forever.

Then she starts to laugh. It is rich and exultant, rippling through her body like the moments after a climax.

* * *

"So," Raynare says almost twelve hours later, "let me guess - you want me to come to you."

It is not a question.

Sitri's familiar, looking for all intents and purposes like an ordinary schoolgirl, replies with its master's voice. Quite literally: Sitri is puppeting it from afar, apparently too busy to leave Kuoh Academy for the moment. It's amusing, the way she pretends Raynare doesn't know exactly why she's unable to spare the time.

"That would be best. The assault on your church proved its vulnerabilities, and we both know my school is _far_ better defended should anyone else try and interrupt us. Even if we helped you repel an assault, the very fact it happened proves I am right to be concerned about our safety."

How cute. She's already trying to shift the focus away from the fact it was the Devils who attacked first.

"Ah yes. Let's talk about _safety_ , shall we?" Raynare hops up onto what's left of the church's gate, balancing on the arch with insolent grace. She looks down at Sitri's familiar, resting her chin in her palm. It is not a coincidence that it is forced to crane its neck just a little further than might be comfortable to look at Raynare's face instead of up her skirt.

Sure, it can't exactly feel pain, and it's not like Sitri needs to move her body in sync with her puppet anyway - but she was still the one who looked away first. At a time like this, that sort of victory counts. Every concession Raynare forces out of Sitri makes her just that _little_ bit more amenable to another, and it starts with the things the girl probably isn't even consciously aware of.

Idly crossing her legs in a flash of moonsilver skin—still balancing on a half-crumbling arch of stone barely as thick as her forearm—Raynare continues to speak.

"The way I see it, there's nothing safe about your school. Or have you forgotten that you're still harbouring the Peerage who waltzed into your territory, turned up on my doorstep, and asked me and mine to 'kindly lay down and die' for no reason at all? How can I trust your assurances after that, _kaichou?_

"Either your vaunted defenses just weren't good enough to stop that impudent brat and his knock-off nuns - or you and Gremory were the ones to let him in."

The familiar opens its mouth to speak, but Raynare cuts it off.

"Ah, ah, ah," she says, "I'm not quite finished yet. Naturally, I don't believe you had anything to do with the attack. You're not that much of a fool. But the fact remains that this city is _not_ safe. Why, then, should I surrender myself to the halls of your power when it's been proven that doesn't even mean anything?"

The familiar pauses, as if thinking. Raynare can almost feel Sitri's mind whirring.

"What are you proposing?" Naturally, Sitri elects to try and cut through the bullshit and dissembling. It's sort of admirable, in the same way you'd admire how a bulldog's jaws refuse to let go even after it's dead. "I presume it's not meeting at the church instead."

"Please," Raynare says, leaning forward over empty air and coincidentally drawing attention to the prominence of her breasts, "if I wanted you where I sleep, it wouldn't be for business. No - all this back-and-forth between two known locations at easily-deducible times is just asking for another ambush. Instead, let's do this as if we're actually aware of what basic operational security is.

"I'll tell you a location. It'll be during the day, in public, and closer to your school than this church. You'll have one hour to get there and set up whatever barriers, wards, and protections you can get away with. Bring however many people you want. After that hour mark, I'll arrive with an associate, and we'll talk. The next time, we reverse the situation - and so on, and so forth."

Left unsaid is the obvious implication that this makes it harder for _anyone_ to mount an ambush - be it the Church, the Fallen, or the Devils. And if any of them are willing to break the general understanding that you don't drag the mundane world into a supernatural conflict, then they have bigger problems anyway.

That is not, of course, the main reason Raynare proposed the idea. She's not taking another step into that school unless she has no other choice, now that she has Twilight Healing. But even if Sitri's interrogated the brat, that won't be her first assumption; not over the fact that Raynare has every reason to distrust the Devils after his attack, even if she's claimed she doesn't.

Circles within circles.

"I will need to discuss this with Rias," the familiar demurs in Sitri's voice, "but I understand your concerns."

"Discuss whatever you like," Raynare says, waving a hand airily in its direction. "We still need to finish cleaning up your mess."

Sitri does not dignify that with a response. Instead, the familiar slumps briefly, before crumpling—as if somebody replaced its bones with water and its flesh with clay—into the form of a wolf. It's a proud thing, with fur the colour of steel and eyes like sapphires in the firelight, and another might call it beautiful.

Raynare's always been more of a cat person.

It slinks away into a nearby alley, and Raynare decides she might as well head back inside for now. They have, of course, already finished the clean-up, but it's not like Sitri has any way of knowing it. Making it seem like she's the one doing Sitri's job—it is the girl's city, after all—instead of the one waiting on her convenience is just another part of the game.

Raynare leans backward until she's almost horizontal, and then a little further as the weight of her torso pulls her off the ledge. No doubt if Mittelt had been there, there'd be some asinine joke about being 'top-heavy'. She starts to fall, eyes closed and relishing the wind against her cheeks. It's been too long since the last chance she had to simply _fly_.

Before she's halfway to the ground, she twists, curling her legs and then her entire body until she's no longer facing down. There's no urgency to it - Raynare treats every inch of the motion like a performance, a series of impossibly perfect moments that culminate in a landing so absurdly light you can't even tell if she ever touched the ground.

She walks across smooth earth—no sign of the battlefield remains—on her way to the church's door, idly brushing off some non-existent dirt from the fingers of her left hand. The doors open with a casual shove, and she strolls through the now-pristine church, conspicuously missing a pew and a cross above the altar.

"Ah, good," Dohnaseek says, lounging against a wall with the sort of lazy laissez-faire that might get him mistaken for a scruffier James Dean, "you're back. I didn't have the opportunity earlier, but I got through to Azazel during the attack. I couldn't explain much to him, since I didn't _know_ much, and you dealt with the situation before evacuation became necessary, but he did say he'd like to speak with you. I expect he wants a full report on the situation."

If the Exorcists and his priests hadn't arrived, if she hadn't been able to bluff the Devil brat into backing down, if anything else had gone wrong, Raynare wouldn't have elected to stay. Kalawarner is a warrior, but Raynare and Dohnaseek are something closer to spies, and the only reason Mittelt isn't a stereotypical magical academic is that she doesn't need to summon Devils to get laid.

(There's a human joke that says if a man hasn't had sex by the time he's thirty, he'll become a wizard.

There's a Devil joke that says if a woman hasn't had sex by the time she's thirty, she'll find herself summoned by a wizard).

No doubt Azazel wants to know exactly what a group Raynare assembled for the explicit purpose of being covert and non-threatening is doing getting into _any_ sort of fight, let alone a full-on assault against their base of operations. At least she actually has a reasonable explanation - and the news about Twilight Healing.

 _Fuck_.

Speaking of Sacred Gears, she has to tell him about Hyoudou. She _has_ to. The existence—and identity—of the Red Dragon Emperor is the sort of information that can and has sparked open conflict, just as with any other Longinus. If Azazel didn't find it out from her, he would from someone else, and he'd never trust her again because what possible reason could she have to conceal something that important?

But, conversely, now that Hyoudou is a Devil and has awakened his Sacred Gear, her assignment is over. She has no reason to be in Kuoh.

The only thing that can stop Azazel from calling her back to the Grigori proper is if she explains what she's _really_ been doing.

But that leads into a similar problem: technically, she's doing exactly what Azazel told her not to do before she left for Kuoh. Sure, she's planned far more thoroughly than she ever has before, the game she's playing with the Devils is the only one she's ever been good at, and she's actually _succeeded_ at what she first set out to do. But she doesn't have the results she'd need to excuse her wilful disobedience. Not yet.

"Raynare?" A voice interrupts her thoughts.

"Of course I'll speak to him," she says, "once I've cleared up this mess with Sitri and Gremory. He won't appreciate a job left half-finished, especially not when it involves a fight—however minor—between our two Factions."

She just needs time to _think_.

Before Dohnaseek can reply, a sound like knuckles on wood echoes through her mind. It seems like Sitri is once again requesting an audience. Well, more likely she's thinking of it as calling Raynare to attend to her, but Raynare prefers to see it differently.

"Send a message to Azazel telling him that I'm still dealing with the aftermath of the attack, but that I'll be available at his convenience any time after, say, twelve hours from now?"

Fallen Angels don't need to sleep. They _can_ , but it isn't a necessity. And even if Azazel doesn't love her, Raynare likes to imagine she's important enough that he'll stop whatever project he's fiddling with in the middle of the night to talk to her.

(He will, but only because he wants to find out exactly what happened as soon as he can. If there's one thing Azazel values above all else, it's information.

Do not think for a second that Raynare doesn't know this).

"As you say." Dohnaseek lifts himself off the wall with a motion so smooth it should be put to jazz and strolls away.

Rather than spinning on her heel and marching straight out of the church, Raynare decides to kick back and relax for a few minutes. Sitri can wait. On the surface, it'll be seen as some petty display of superiority—the whole 'leave them hanging to show your time is more valuable than theirs' technique—and that's how Raynare wants Sitri to take it. Better to be seen as arrogant than off-balance.

She stretches herself out on the nearest pew like a centrefold, tucking her chin between her palms. Idly brushing away a stray lock of hair from her forehead with a wingtip, Raynare studies the wood in front of her as if it alone contains all the secrets of the universe. A pair of obnoxious brats have scratched two names into it, surrounded by a loveheart. Hah. She's not sure whether to applaud them for the desecration—however minor—or mock them for thinking they have a clue what love _is_.

Closing her eyes with a sigh, she lets the high, ringing chime of the world wash over her mind. It's not senjutsu—it's not even _useful_ —but that's not the point. There is Light in all the things God made, from the meanest clod of dirt up to something as astonishing as her, and it resonates between them in vast, ineffable harmonies. Is it any wonder she looks down on humanity, when they live their lives blind to Light and deaf to its ineluctable rhythm?

And to think God thought them worthy of the Sun. The Earth. The Sacred Gears.

It boggles the mind.

Raynare lifts her left hand, keeping her chin propped up with the other. Twilight Healing shimmers into being, two bright, glinting rings topped by coruscant gems. Her legs kick back and forth in long, lazy arcs, and for a moment she looks like any other girl, relaxing on some sleepy Sunday without a care for what tomorrow brings.

Then she dismisses Twilight Healing with a flick of her wrist, and that girl is lost beneath the way she arches her back into a stretch as she stands. Her shirt presses taught against her torso until she's less wearing it than it's wearing _her_ , and it becomes quite clear that there isn't anything beneath it except, well, Raynare.

Shortly afterward, she pushes the church's doors open and returns to the gate, where Sitri's familiar stands once again as a schoolgirl.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," Raynare says in a voice as genuine as any politician's.

"I'm sure you are." The reply is positively _acerbic_. Surprise surprise, Sitri doesn't seem to be one for posturing or wasting time. "After discussing your proposal with Rias, we have decided to accept it with the following caveats: both sides can veto a location suggestion, and the hosts will have two hours—not one—to prepare."

Hmm. Reasonable enough; from an objective standpoint, the veto makes it harder for the side proposing the location to ambush the other, and adding an extra hour doesn't change all that much as far as the risks are concerned. It's not like Raynare didn't think of them beforehand, of course - it's just you never open negotiations with your best offer. Sitri and Gremory wouldn't have accepted her initial proposal anyway, even if she'd sweetened it with her immortal soul and a roll in the hay, or however the colloquialism goes.

Raynare taps her chin, as if thinking. "I guess that's fine."

"Then do you already have a location in mind?" The familiar just takes a _little_ too long to reply. Looks like Sitri didn't expect it to be that easy.

"Well," Raynare continues, "I'm thinking for our first time, we could go to the bathhouses."

"No." She can hear the blush in Sitri's voice; a pity it didn't carry over to the familiar's face. Ah well.

"You know, for a Devil, you're not very devilish," she says mildly. "A chance to see me naked, wet, and almost completely alone? The tactical benefits if you don't trust me should be tempting enough on their own - and that's without the view."

Raynare shrugs, lithe as a dancer and nonchalant as a cat.

"But if you insist, there's a cafe a couple of blocks away from your school in the direction of the airport. I believe it's run by someone called Minato?"

"I know the one. That will be acceptable."

"See you there in two hours," Raynare says, tossing a jaunty wave over her shoulder as she turns toward the church's doors.

The familiar does not reply.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **Hmm. It's almost like Raynare doesn't deal well with failure, no matter how temporary. Who would have thought? On a related topic, other things that are weird to write about while listening to Girls' Generation: human sacrifice.**

 **Anyway, that's Asia's situation resolved.** **Now that such a _minor story detail_ has been _totally glossed over_ and is _in no way important or contentious_ , let's move on!**

 **I don't think we've ever been told what Sona's familiar is, or even if she has one, but I'm going to assume she does (conveniently, my AU helps justify that, for obvious reasons). So it's a wolf, because wolves are cool. Cats are cooler, of course, but that's neither here nor there.**

 **I'm disappointed that Sona didn't accept the bathhouse offer. The one thing this story obviously needs is more fanservicey descriptions, amirite?**

 **Many thanks to Stone Mason for his beta-reading duties; they were impeccable as usual.**

 **I welcome all questions, comments, and concerns about this chapter. The next will involve a nice discussion between Raynare, Rias, and Sona, and then Azazel's second appearance.**

 **One final note: I'm back at university now, which means the only real time I can guarantee I have to write in are the train rides up (but not back, because I usually don't get a seat until halfway through the journey home). Luckily, that train ride is an hour, so I will probably end up spending the same amount of time writing per week as I normally do, and so updates shouldn't be delayed much further than they already are by who I am as a person.**


	8. Sparring

"This is nice," Kalawarner says, absently stretching her arms up over her head and almost causing a car accident in the process, given what the motion does to her chest. "Feels like it's been ages since we had the chance to wander like this."

Raynare raises an eyebrow. "Did you forget we spent the day before yesterday looking for Sellzen?"

The joke being, of course, that Angels—Fallen or not—do not forget.

Kalawarner, eyes still closed and face upturned to the sun, nevertheless manages to swat Raynare unerringly on the back of her head. "Fuck off. You know what I mean."

Raynare tosses her hair in response. The way it settles against her neck—like somebody's stitched the night sky into ten thousand flawless strands—deserves to be set to music. "Mmm, I suppose. I wish we could have flown there instead of walking, though."

"Good Lord, woman, learn to be satisfied by something."

"Are you offering? I'm sorry, but my heart lies elsewhere."

Kalawarner looks Raynare up and down. There is more suggestion in that single glance than the interior of a brothel. "That can be fixed."

"Oh?" Raynare's tone is nothing but mild curiosity. "What if I don't like girls?"

" _Please_ ," Kalawarner says, "at least make it hard."

"Isn't that your job?"

Kalawarner opens her mouth, blinks, and then closes it. Eventually, she speaks, wryly amused. "Okay, you got me there."

"Good," Raynare replies, "because I really didn't know where I was taking that next."

"I'd have assumed I was the one meant to be taking it." Kalawarner's smirk is the sort of smug to impress even the cat that caught the canary.

"Oh for God's sake."

"No, that was the sort of thing that got me _kicked_ _out_ of Heaven."

Raynare looks away from Kalawarner. It's not hard to control her smile, but she's not trying to. "One day, you'll stop trying to get the last word every single time."

She can _hear_ the jokes running through Kalawarner's thoughts, even if the woman doesn't voice them. "Eh, somebody has to keep you on your toes. Heaven knows I love Mittelt, but it's not going to be her."

Briefly, Raynare wonders if Kalawarner cracks jokes about Raynare when she's with Mittelt. Probably, since she does the same straight to Raynare's face.

"Anyway," Kalawarner continues, "if I'm remembering correctly, we need to take a left here."

"You'd know better than I would," Raynare says, turning down the street Kalawarner indicates. "I'd only heard of the place because you and Dohnaseek mentioned it."

"It's nice, apparently; busy, but the food's decent and the service isn't slow. Dohnaseek said he stopped there a few times while he was out and about, so I figured I'd drop by and have a look myself when I had the chance."

"Never took you for a café connoisseur - doesn't it involve leaving the house?"

"Don't be rude," Kalawarner huffs. "How am I meant to sample the sights unless I have somewhere to take them first? Unlike _some_ people, I prefer a little wooing with my woo-hooing."

"I'm sure there's some language that sentence made sense in," Raynare replies, "but I'll have to get back to you on that one."

"Remind me to introduce you to the Sims at some point."

"Sounds fascinating," Raynare deadpans. By her tone, she's about as interested in the concept as she is in becoming a nun.

"Fucking heathen."

"Been there, done that."

Kalawarner snickers. "Haven't we all?"

The conversation drifts into a comfortable silence, and a few minutes later, Kalawarner directs them both down another street and right to the front of the café. Sure enough, it's warded to Hell and back—probably not literally, but it's not impossible—and the only people inside are Gremory, Sitri, and their Queens.

Naturally, short and white from the meeting about Sellzen is in the café opposite. And a pair of girls who were equally present are sitting on a nearby bench, ostensibly chatting to one another. They're just a little _too_ obvious for it not to be deliberate - sure, it's not like they're anywhere near subtle enough to have hidden from Raynare's eyes anyway, but they're not even trying.

She's not quite sure who the message is for - her, or anyone who might be considering... interrupting, so to speak, the meeting? Probably both, all things considered. Not that there should _be_ any cases of the latter. Raynare had even sent out Mittelt and Dohnaseek at the same time as herself and Kalawarner, and disguised everyone with illusions, just for paranoia's sake.

The four of them—Dohnaseek included—all look like an older version of Amano Yuuma. Two pairs of identical twins, each sent on an oblique route through the city that crossed the other's in several places. The sort of obvious that's meant to make your enemies believe it's a distraction for something else. Raynare had actually started the day walking with Dohnaseek instead, only swapping him off for Kalawarner about twenty minutes before they arrived at the café.

It had been rather amusing to observe how the humans nearby had reacted each time they'd met up.

"After you," Raynare says, indicating the door. If it's a trap, Kalawarner is better equipped to deal with it than Raynare. If it's not, maybe they'll mistake Kalawarner _for_ Raynare, and she'll be able to start the meeting by embarrassing her hosts. Every victory only makes the next that much easier, and all that.

Kalawarner enters the café, and Raynare follows. Gremory, Sitri, and their Queens are seated pride-of-place in the central table (haven't they heard of lines of sight?) and there are two seats spare for Raynare and Kalawarner. An obvious-enough invitation.

Raynare waits until Kalawarner sits to do so herself, to preserve the illusion that Kalawarner is the one in charge, and thus actually the real Raynare. The seats are not particularly luxurious, but that's to be expected. They're mortal-made, after all.

"There are no humans here," Gremory says by way of greeting. "There's no need for disguises."

Hmm. To refuse the implication would be rude - and more importantly, the _wrong_ sort of rude. There is a difference between, say, ignoring Sitri's Queen back when they first met by keeping her legs on the desk, and deliberately and wilfully deceiving the Devils as to who they're actually _talking to_.

Raynare is almost impressed. It's a way to force the revelation of which almost-Amano is Raynare and which one is not without revealing whether they actually knew beforehand. She'd expect that sort of play out of a far more political animal than either of the two Heiresses - but then again, these are the sisters of Satans. They're bound to pick up a few things here and there.

She releases the illusions with a flex of will, watching the way Tsu… Tsubaki, she thinks, twitches in response. It's almost insulting. If she was going to attack either King, she wouldn't be stupid enough to do it at a time and place like this. (Really, she wouldn't be stupid enough to do it at all, given who they are, but that's beside the point).

"So," she says, "let's get down to brass tacks. Why were we attacked by one of yours?"

"Diodora," Sitri says with the barest hint of disdain, "is most certainly not one of _ours_."

Naturally, she leaves off the last name, and thereby the way to identify which Pillar he came from. Even if the girl clearly doesn't like him, she's not going to give Raynare—and thus the Fallen—anything more than she has to. The meanest Devil is still held in higher regard by his fellows than the greatest Fallen Angel - though she can't imagine many willing to express the sentiment to Azazel's face.

"Well, that's nice and all, but I'd still like to know why we were attacked." Raynare's voice is as steady as steel. She won't let them run away on this; not until _she_ says they can. "So you didn't send him, and I'll buy you didn't look the other way when he arrived either - but that means it was still your _negligence_ that resulted in the attack.

"For all intents and purposes, my church is an embassy between the Grigori and the Houses of Gremory and Sitri. And not only was it assaulted by a full Peerage led by a King who's part of the 72 Pillars—don't think I can't tell—but I _saved his life_ when the Church and the Exorcists came.

"I could have just stepped back and let the two sides duke it out while I waited for you to arrive and handle the security of your own city. It would have been the sensible thing to do. But I didn't. I fought a battle that wasn't even mine to protect a man who wanted to kill me, simply because that's what it _means_ to be in an alliance.

"The _least_ of what you owe me is an explanation."

She finishes her speech by crossing her arms and leaning back in her chair. It should not be possible to balance it so easily over empty air, but Raynare does not seem to be aware of the difficulty. By her side, Kalawarner is silent - but her very presence is a reminder that it wasn't just Raynare who fought alongside the Devils.

"Your point is… _reasonable_ ," Sitri says, her voice even on the surface. Beneath it, though, Raynare can see the admission pains her like a splinter under her thumb. "The truth is that Diodora's actions are as inexplicable to us as they are to you. He is still not very lucid after his healing, and when we asked, he simply cursed you for stealing 'his lovely Asia'."

"His profanity was quite impressive," Himejima chimes in, all sweetness and light. "I believe his mouth is almost as foul as yours, Amano-san."

Kalawarner's laughter is as smooth and rich as whiskey.

"Ara?" Himejima tilts her head to the side, exposing the fine muscles of her neck. The motion is oddly familiar. "Was it something I said?"

"Girl," Kalawarner says, still chuckling, "remind me to introduce you to a friend of mine. I think you'll get along swimmingly."

Briefly, Raynare wonders if Mittelt would be annoyed by meeting a teenager a tenth of her age and tits ten times the size. Then again, Raynare's not sure if she actually _cares_ about how flat she is - she'll mock Raynare for her own endowment, but then again she'll mock Raynare for anything she thinks she can get away with. And she's never seemed to be jealous of Kalawarner either.

"Returning to the topic at hand," Sitri says, "all we managed to get out of Diodora—before he excited himself too much and we had to return him to his rest—was something about this 'Asia', and a large number of invectives directed at both you and the Exorcist. Presumably you are aware of what he's talking about?"

 _Don't try to turn this back on me, girl. I was playing these sorts of games before your sister was even_ born _._

"Not particularly," Raynare replies, and it's even true from certain points of view. "She was just a nun who got excommunicated, and we picked her up like we usually do. I guess Diodora wanted her for his Peerage. If the rest of his servants were any indication, he's got a fetish for that sort of thing."

"Is that so? I wouldn't expect someone like Diodora to so blatantly act against our Houses for the sake of a single girl," Gremory says. Interestingly enough, her tone isn't entirely disapproving. Just mostly. A soft spot for the ideal of a romantic hero, sweeping in to rescue a fair maiden from the dastardly clutches of the Fallen, perhaps? Surely she's not _that_ blind to what lurks behind Diodora's eyes.

Then again, maybe she is. She's young even by mortal standards.

"I wouldn't have expected him to succeed at it either," Raynare says, with all the mildness of a dagger sheathed in silk, "but look where we are."

Into the resulting silence, she sighs, rocking forward on her chair until she can lean her elbows on the table and fold her hands under her chin. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Kalawarner smirk the way she does when she's laughing at a joke she hasn't told yet. What's so funny about the way Raynare is sitting?

"Look. You fucked up. We can twist and turn the blame until we end up in the conversational equivalent of a Klein bottle, but at the end of the day, my compatriots and I were attacked in your territory by a Peerage and King who should not have been there. That's on you.

"However, as much as I might want to, we can't afford to dwell on that. Honestly, I should really be thankful for Diodora, because he at least drew our _real_ enemy out of the shadows again."

Certainly, Gremory and Sitri refuse to say exactly what Pillar Diodora calls his own. But he must be _important_ for the Church to mount an assault when they already knew the Devils—and the Fallen—were looking for them. It's the only reasonable explanation she can think of for why they attacked. They couldn't have known about Argento. Which means they must have been watching the abandoned church, seen him arrive, recognised him from one of their hit-lists, and mobilised immediately.

"So," she says, not bothering to hide her regret, "I'm willing to let bygones be bygones, and forget about Diodora for the moment. One idiotic brat is not worth what we are trying to build."

Considering he almost lost her Twilight Healing, Raynare's not entirely sure she believes herself. It wouldn't be the _end_ of any possible alliance if she demanded recompense for the attack; Gremory and Sitri might not give it to her, but it'd send a message that the Fallen would not take being fucked with lying down. (At least, not unless they were paid for it). And it'd certainly satisfy her.

But she has to explain herself to Azazel later today, and that means she needs to make decisions _he_ would have in her position. Her lord is many things - and one of those is a general. The man who sends ten thousand to die over here so forty thousand may live over there. He would let Diodora go; he wouldn't invalidate the effort of saving the fool in the first place because of vengeance, however well-deserved it may be.

And there are benefits to implying a favour without actively claiming it. If you never define what someone owes you, they generally feel obligated to you for longer than they should. Let the Devils believe she's—well, not forgotten—forgiven them for Diodora, and they'll be more inclined to consider it when she _does_ press a point later down the line.

"That's very… generous of you," Sitri says, with the implication that she has faith in Raynare's generosity the same way she has faith in God.

"Isn't it just?" Raynare's smile is as sweet as a jilted lover's.

Kalawarner conceals a cough with her hand. It's so natural Raynare almost doesn't catch the muttered 'hatesex' beneath it.

 _Please_. If Raynare wanted an angry fuck with someone who looked like a schoolgirl, she'd seduce Mittelt. Even if the very thought makes her shudder.

"Well, moving on," Gremory says, her eyes suspiciously bright with laughter, "we really should discuss the Church. They went too far the moment they attacked Koneko-chan and Issei-kun, let alone when they attacked you and almost killed him again."

Because Gremory would _definitely_ have cared about the second attack if it hadn't been for Hyoudou body-blocking the grenade. Though, Raynare supposes, that's not exactly fair - she'd have likely still been annoyed that the Church were acting so blatantly in her territory.

"The obvious answer, I would think, is to call in reinforcements." Raynare's voice is matter-of-fact, like she's pointing out that the sky is blue. "We've already narrowed down their location, so all that's left for you to do is gather your forces and purge them from your city."

This is where it gets dangerous. If Sitri and Gremory agree, then Raynare has relegated herself to the sidelines. There is no worse place to be when you're trying to broker an alliance: how can she demonstrate that she, as a representative of the Grigori as a whole, is a reliable and relatively trustworthy ally when she has no opportunity to _be_ relied upon or trusted?

Everything she's done up to this point is just setting the stage. It's a cliché older than even Raynare herself - but the fact remains that it's easier to trust someone with the little things once you've already trusted them with your life. And there is no better place to prove you can than on the battlefield.

If she wants Sitri and Gremory to _believe_ that working with the Grigori is not only possible but beneficial—to have their words come from the sincerity of the heart, not just the mind, when they speak of it to their siblings—then she needs to hurt and be hurt by their side. She needs to put a spear through the eye of the man who makes to strike Gremory from behind, and let Sitri drown the one who tries to do the same to her.

To someone like Raynare, who prefers to win most of her battles by not fighting them in the first place, the very idea is anathema. Putting her life—her _life_ —in the hands of a pair of pubescent Devils and the idiots who follow them? Having to rely on Gremory, whose Peerage includes the _Red Dragon Emperor_ in the shape of a lack-witted pervert, and a Queen who despises the Fallen the way Raynare does God? Or Sitri, who probably thinks of war the same way she does chess and has a Queen who can't even tell the difference between breaking an illusion and launching an attack?

Two weeks ago, she'd have called herself mad.

And she is.

But at the end of the day, it comes down to this: she has to make a decision about what she values more.

Her life, or her love.

Inside her mind, Raynare laughs, low and dark with amusement.

 _Hah._

What sort of fucking question is that?

"I don't believe we need to," Sitri says. "Even an Exorcist is no match for both of our Peerages combined, and our defense of you made it clear that ordinary priests are… less than a threat."

Raynare notes the faint curl of Sitri's lips, like she's remembering something rancid. Looks like someone isn't used to killing. It's almost as adorable as that sly little implication that Gremory and Sitri had arrived to fight off something the Fallen couldn't handle.

Like, say, the Exorcist that neither King was even willing to approach and that Raynare fought in almost-single-combat.

But she'll allow Sitri that imagined victory; she's fallen right into Raynare's trap. She and Gremory are young. They're proud. They've had their first taste of real power - ruling Kuoh. And there's no way they wouldn't feel overshadowed by their siblings; no way they wouldn't want to prove they're just as capable.

Of _course_ they're going to refuse a suggestion—from a Fallen Angel they still don't trust, at that—to win this fight with anything but their own strength. Really, engineering that much wasn't the difficult part; no, that will be convincing them to let Raynare and her fellows help as well.

"Oh?" she says, as if surprised. "Well, I suppose I can't convince you."

The quick acquiescence is probably suspicious, but it's not like Sitri is the sort of person to retract that sort of declaration unless she's _proven_ wrong - especially not in front of political representatives of the Grigori. It wouldn't do to lose face, after all.

"I hope that you'll still allow us to assist, then," Raynare continues, "by right of retribution if nothing else."

"We would prefer to handle this ourselves," Gremory says. "As you yourself pointed out earlier, it is our fight."

"No," Raynare says, shaking her head, "it _was_ your fight. I made it ours as well the moment I stopped the Exorcist from running Diodora through. They've already tried to break our arrangement apart by framing us for the attack on your servant, and when that failed, they sought to sunder it from higher up on the chain - or do you think them trying to kill a Devil noble in nominally _Fallen_ territory was a coincidence?"

To be fair, it probably was. But they don't need to know that.

"If they'd succeeded, the truth wouldn't matter. An Heir dead in Fallen territory to an Exorcist's blade? There's one obvious answer, and you'll forgive me for not believing that many Devils would want to look any further. The point is, they've made it _quite clear_ they don't want us working together. Why give them exactly that?"

Raynare unfolds her hands from beneath her chin, kicking back in her chair as if her only care in the world is keeping it balanced.

"And really, let's be honest. Those priests were a joke… when they were under attack from three sides by opponents from two different species. Or did you miss the fact that a third of Diodora's Peerage were corpses—or close to it—by the time you arrived?"

Raynare waits just long enough for Sitri to begin to reply before she speaks again, cutting her off.

"There's also Sellzen, of course. He's good, even for an Exorcist. Imagine him at the head of a small army, each and every member out for blood. Yours, preferably. They might not decide to kill you and Gremory, because even the zealots know pissing off Sirzechs Lucifer and Serafall Leviathan is _fucking stupid_ , but they can hurt you, and your Peerages have no such protection.

"Sure, I'll buy you'll win that fight. But don't expect me to attend the funerals afterward, except maybe to say 'I told you so'."

"You've made your point," Gremory says flatly. It's almost like she's angry. Who would have thought?

"I'd hope so," she says, rolling her shoulders in a shrug that wouldn't be out of place in a dance, "or else I wouldn't have had much reason to speak."

"Personally, I think the world would be a better place if you never found a reason again," Himejima chimes in. Ouch. Raynare must have pissed the two of them off something _fierce_.

"You can think?" she asks, as if surprised. "Truly, the Lord is generous with his miracles."

Kalawarner snickers.

"If you're quite finished," Sitri says, "I take it you want our permission to assist us in fighting against the Church?"

"Less permission and more… _cooperation_. Make no mistake: regardless of what you say—unless you plan on placing us under house arrest or kicking us from Kuoh entirely—we're not going to sit around and ignore the problem. This isn't just your war any longer."

Sure, there's not all that much Raynare and her compatriots can exactly _do_ if the Devils refuse to work with them; she's already handed over the information about where the Church is probably hiding, and mounting a four-man assault would be out of the question. But three conflicting actors on the same stage never ends well, and they have to know it.

"Yes, you've made that quite clear," Sitri says, a few inches shy of exasperated. "I'll be honest, I'm somewhat surprised. You're not particularly subtle about what you want."

"Am I supposed to pretend I _don't_ want the alliance whose cause I was sent here to further? I told you - I'm not a diplomat. I'm just here to show we're able to work together. I'm sure you'll forgive me for trying to get another opportunity to prove that."

"Then why suggest reinforcements at all?" Now there's an unexpected question; Raynare didn't think Sitri would pick up on that in the slightest.

"I'm a Fallen Angel," Raynare says, throwing her arms out wide as if inviting someone to strike her. "I don't like you. I don't like Devils. Your race is young. Arrogant. You think you _deserve_ to exist, like you weren't born from anathema and madness. Like your every breath doesn't make the world recoil in horror. There are more sins to my name than there are feathers in my wings, and even _I_ think you are blasphemy.

"What do you think it takes for me to not only sit here at this table, but to suggest that a possible solution to a problem is to call in _more of you?_ "

Raynare is, of course, exaggerating. She's repeating—almost verbatim—some of the rants she's heard around the Grigori. But at the end of the day, she doesn't care if Sitri and Gremory think she hates them for existing. They just have to believe she's genuine about what she's proposing.

"I didn't think you were that much of a bigot," Gremory says. Each syllable is as sharp as a knife.

Raynare raises an eyebrow, like she's wondering why Gremory thought she knew Raynare at all. "I'm sure. A word of advice, girl - just assume we hate you as much as you hate us. More so, probably. We don't want to work together because we think you're better than Angels; it's because we run into one another a lot more than either of us do Heaven.

"I've said this before: every time we fight, we're just killing one another over and over in a cold war that benefits nobody but our enemies. The satisfaction of ramming a spear into a Devil's skull doesn't outweigh the tragedy of watching one of you return the favour. If I had to choose between a world where all the Devils were dead, but so were the Fallen, or a world where I'd never get to kill one of you again in exchange for not losing another friend?

"Well, you already know my answer."

It's the sort of speech designed to appeal to her audience, and Gremory especially. Everyone knows that the Lucifer is the de-facto leader of the Underworld, for all that there are four Satans. It's always been that way, ever since the Morningstar. Truth be told, there are a fair few Fallen Raynare would trade in exchange for a Devil's life, but Azazel wouldn't, and if that sentiment helps bring Gremory further on-side? All according to plan.

"So we do," Sitri says, and then pauses for a long moment. "Rest assured we will consider your proposal."

Raynare does not relax. Not visibly, anyway. She's far from that amateurish.

"I guess we're done here, then," she says instead. "Unless there's anything you wanted to bring up?"

Gremory shakes her head. "No, there isn't."

"Well, that was a good talk." Raynare stands, and Kalawarner mirrors her. "We should do this again, catch up over coffee, communicate our ground-level logistical goals in order to facilitate synergistic networking, et cetera, et cetera."

Collectively, the Devils blink. If their expressions were letters, you could add the four of them together to spell 'what'.

Raynare's smile is hidden by the fact she's already turned away.

The journey back to the church is uneventful, thankfully; it starts to snow, but that's about it. Absently, she reaches out to catch a snowflake on the tip of a finger. It sits there, impossibly balanced, and only starts to melt when she releases it from the hold of her Light.

Beside her, Kalawarner covers her face with an arm.

"I'll never understand how you can stand this stuff," she says, her voice muffled by her sleeve.

"Don't tell me the great Kalawarner is bothered by a little cold?"

Kalawarner's reply is a gesture rude enough to have sparked multiple wars. "If rain is God's piss, then snow is Him after a bad night of curry."

"Thank you for that lovely mental image," Raynare says, shuddering. "Would you like to ruin anything else I enjoy while you're at it?"

Kalawarner opens her mouth.

"That was not an invitation."

Kalawarner closes her mouth.

With that, they arrive at the church's street - a few moments later, they pass through the door. Kalawarner sighs, and her Light flares around her body, vaporising what remains of the snow that hadn't already melted from the heat of her skin. Standing next to her as she is, it feels like a blast of summer across Raynare's face.

"I'm going to see whether Dohnaseek has anything else for me from Azazel," Raynare says, brushing a few flecks of snow off her sleeve as she moves towards the hallway.

"Good luck." Kalawarner's voice is soft with sincerity.

Raynare acknowledges her with an absent wave over her shoulder, her mind already on other things. She finds Dohnaseek at the kitchen table, filling out a crossword with a cigar in his mouth. The room reeks of smoke, but that only adds to the way he seems the very picture of the roguish gentleman often found on the cover of Victorian bodice-rippers. Not that, of course, Raynare would have any idea what those are.

"So," she says, leaning against the doorway, "what's the news?"

Dohnaseek puffs on the cigar, and then blows a smoke ring in the shape of a mobius strip. "Our lord wished for you to contact him as soon as you were able."

"Did he say anything else?"

"Nothing important." Dohanseek is already returning his attention to the crossword, "just checking up on all of us. The usual."

"I won't keep him waiting, then."

"Try not to get us all executed." Dohnaseek's voice halts her just as she's about to leave. "I promised Leliel I'd buy her a new set of kimono, but I haven't had a chance to visit the stores yet."

"I'm sure I can convince him to leave you out of it," Raynare replies.

Dohnaseek shakes his head, short and sharp. "Then who will I have to model them for me? I'm afraid I'll need at least one of you or Kalawarner as well. You can't expect me to send back something that doesn't properly fit."

It goes without saying why Mittelt isn't a very good model for her sister's clothes.

"I suppose I can't," she says with the sort of exaggerated seriousness that very clearly isn't. "Very well - I'll see what I can do."

Dohnaseek nods, taking a long pull of his cigar in obvious dismissal.

It's only when she's almost to her room that Raynare realises she's still not sure whether he was actually joking.

* * *

 **Author's Note:**

 **It's kind of fun writing Raynare speculating about Freed and the Church. She's the sort of wrong best described as** _ **entertainly**_ **.**

 **Kalawarner ships Raynare/Sona? What heresy is this? (I feel like I should probably clarify at this point that it's Sir Heresy Not Appearing In This Story, just in case anyone gets the wrong idea).**

 **Please forgive me for my inevitable fucking up of Rias. She's not an asshole, so I can't write her very well.**

 **A shoutout to all fictions for reminding me that snow exists in winter. Apparently that's a thing that happens in other countries. Your climates are** _ **weird**_ **.**

 **I should probably make some sort of swear jar for broken promises at this rate. Anyway, the conversation with Azazel will be first thing next chapter - I made the decision not to delay this chapter another 2-3 weeks when the one with Sona and Rias hit 4500 words and they'd** _ **just**_ **finished talking.**

 **Thank you for all your reviews for the last chapter; I** _ **think**_ **I got to all of them this time. As always, I'm available for any questions, comments or concerns.**

 **Many thanks to my betas, Stone Mason and Eno Remnant.**


	9. Divisions

"My lord," Raynare says, "you wished to speak with me?"

The illusion of Azazel, conjured by the crystal through which the two of them speak, studies her impassively. She shifts under his gaze, suddenly wishing she'd worn something better. Or nothing at all.

"I did," he replies, neither angry nor approving. At least, she hopes so. Reading Azazel is difficult at the best of times, and Raynare finds it harder than most. He's too distracting.

"What would you like to know about first?"

"Whatever you think is the most pressing issue." It's a test. It has to be. Azazel is always better-informed than he lets on—he's almost all-knowing, sometimes—and brilliant besides; he's probably figured out half her plan just from what Dohnaseek's told him, let alone from what other sources he's tapping.

So what would _he_ think is the most important – the attack, Hyoudou, Twilight Healing, or her negotiations with the Devils?

Stupid question.

"We're all safe," she says. "Mittelt maintained the wards during the attack, Dohnaseek speaks for himself, and Kalawarner was with me. The initial perpetrator has been tacitly acknowledged as rogue by Gremory and Sitri, and they stood with us to fend off the Church when an Exorcist sought to take advantage of the situation. I do not believe there will be any repercussions from the Underworld – none of us laid a hand on a Devil, and I even saved one of their lives from the Exorcist."

"I see," is all Azazel says, but he does smile. Raynare's eyes follow the curve of his lips before flicking back up to meet his gaze again. "That is indeed good news."

"I have more, my lord. Have you heard of Twilight Healing?"

"The Sacred Gear that can heal even Devils?" Azazel raises an eyebrow, as if asking why she thinks he wouldn't have; or perhaps wondering why she's chosen to draw his attention to something like that out of nowhere. Unless it's encouragement for her to get on with it, since he could easily have guessed why she might have raised the topic.

Like she said, Azazel is hard to read.

Raynare raises her left arm, and spring blooms in her veins. Twilight Healing fades into existence with a verdant shimmer, and she holds it up for Azazel's inspection.

"It is ours," she says, and does not hide her smile. _Look at me_ , her triumph says, _and all that I have won_.

"Now that is _excellent_ news," Azazel replies. "I would like to hear the story behind it."

"When I heard about Twilight Healing, and the fact its bearer was excommunicated, I saw an opportunity. I contacted her with Dohnaseek's help, and convinced her to join the Grigori. By that point, you'd instructed me to come to Kuoh, so I organised for Argento—the girl who held it—to do the same.

"Obviously Argento herself was a liability; all we needed was the Gear itself. So with the help of the winter solstice, I performed the ritual to extract it and implant it into me. There were some complications with the process, but nothing I couldn't handle."

She would have preferred not to mention that last bit, but Azazel already knows they were attacked. That's something she _has_ to explain, and the two things are related, so she might as well look like she's volunteering it on her own initiative.

"Complications? I presume the Devil was also after the girl?"

"Yes," Raynare says. "I'm not sure he necessarily wanted her for the Gear itself – his entire Peerage was full of nuns, and the way he talked about her makes me believe he was thinking with his cock instead. I'd almost bluffed him away when the Church attacked, but they were primarily after the Devil, not us. I'm certain he's the heir to one of the Pillars, and the Church must have decided to assassinate him while he was out in the open.

"I saved his life by taking on the Exorcist, and Kalawarner provided covering fire to his Peerage until Gremory and Sitri turned up with theirs. The priests didn't last long after that, and the Exorcist fled, though not before tossing a holy hand grenade at Gremory."

For some reason, Azazel smirks, but at her questioning look, he just waves her to continue.

Unfortunately, this is where it gets a little… awkward.

"My lord, I must apologise," she says, bowing her head with a hand over her heart. "I did not manage to keep Hyoudou Issei safe. On the same day I met with the Devils to announce my presence—where it became clear they also knew of his Sacred Gear—he was attacked and killed by the very Exorcist I fought off last night."

"Which one resurrected him?" Azazel asks. "Sitri or Gremory?"

"Gremory," she replies, "which leads me to my next point. Hyoudou caught the grenade before it could reach his King, though I don't believe it was anything more than by accident. It detonated directly in his face."

"That is… unfortunate," Azazel says, "but I would not blame you for it, Raynare. I did not tell you to keep him out of the Devil's hands, even if I'd have preferred it, and once he was within them, he was far beyond your mandate."

"Thank you, my lord, but that wasn't why I brought it up. Hyoudou survived."

Azazel blinks. "What Gear did he have, then? Mirror Alice? Night Reflection?"

Raynare takes a deep breath. "Boosted Gear. Hyoudou Issei is the Red Dragon Emperor."

For a long moment, Azazel is silent.

"Interesting," he says eventually. "I must admit, I did not see that one coming. Perhaps I should have asked you to recruit him after all."

"You couldn't have known, my lord!"

Azazel's smile is lop-sided. "You'd be surprised by the things I couldn't have known, Raynare. Speaking of which, why have you been meeting with the Devils so often? I would have expected you to stay as far away from them as possible once you'd made contact."

This is it. This is her moment.

"Negotiating peace," she says. "Sitri and Gremory are the two individuals with the most influence on the behaviour of their respective siblings – who are the two most important Satans to convince that an alliance with the Grigori is in the Devil's best interests. I have been doing everything I can to cooperate with them, to convince them of the sincerity of my intentions, and to make them believe that it is _possible_ for the Devils and the Fallen to work together instead of war together.

"I'm sure the Lucifer and the Leviathan have heard a hundred different arguments from a hundred different voices; some for an alliance, some against it. But I would bet that they have never heard one in favour from their little sisters. It'll be on their minds the next time you speak with them, my lord. They'll know that you had agents near that which they hold most dear—agents who made their dislike of Devils as a whole quite clear—and yet those agents did nothing except _help them_. If it doesn't make them listen, it'll at least make them think about it."

Raynare pauses, and then looks down at the floor as if she's never seen such a thing before.

"I, uh, may have told them—and the Devils who attacked seeking Argento—that I was an official ambassador on your behalf as well. I needed a way to get them to take me seriously."

When she lifts her head, Azazel's expression is not one of resigned amusement. There is no sly quirk to his lips, no pride or even approval in his eyes. His face is as still as the surface of a lake. The silence stretches onward, and each moment feels like someone's clamped a hand tighter and tighter around her bones. She's done well. She _has_. She's given him the face and name of the Red Dragon Emperor, control of Twilight Healing, and an in with the Devils.

 _Why is he so quiet?_

She's just about to open her mouth when he speaks. The timing is too perfect to be anything but deliberate.

"Why—for all your cunning, Raynare—are you such a blasted _fool?_ "

Raynare flinches like he's slapped her. Azazel has never raised his voice at her. Never insulted her. Never looked upon her with anger. He is the one of two people in the world she can trust to treat her with kindness for no other reason than the fact she exists.

Today, he has done all three.

"Imagine you lead an army," he says before she can even begin to think, "and you stand on a battlefield to fight for your very survival. You face two other armies, and your only consolation is that they hate each other as much as they hate you. But you are _tired_ of this war. You have been fighting for so long that you've forgotten why you ever started to care; gone is the impetuosity of your youth, replaced by a wisdom earned only through watching your friends die. And die. And _die_.

"You know that, in this, you are not alone. The other generals? They want this war to end as much as you do. But none of you are unassailable dictators, and most of your soldiers have never imagined that there could be anything but this eternal struggle. If any side reaches out to another, the third will believe it a plot to destroy them – after all, each army is evenly matched, and the only way to crush them is through an alliance.

"That is the _only reason_ you are not in constant, open conflict – because if one side marches in earnest, the others will ally and destroy them. So what do you think it looks like to the third when a group of your soldiers run off and start parleying with those from the second?"

 _Oh_.

"There is one, single way we will achieve any sort of peace before this world ends, Raynare: when we _all_ come to the negotiating table at the same time, with the same intentions." Azazel sighs, leaning his head back in his chair. "Otherwise we might as well cast aside centuries of progress and get straight back into murdering one another for the sake of those long since dead."

"I am so, so sorry, my lo—"

"No, you're not," Azazel says, almost lightly. Like a blade kissing the back of her neck. "Not properly. You're sorry that you've risked the peace I've been working towards. You're sorry that you weren't smart enough to see the whole picture. You're sorry that your gamble has failed. But those are consequences. The consequences of what you _should_ be sorry for: disobeying me because you believed you knew better."

"That's not what it was!" She feels like she's made of glass. His every word is a hammer-blow against her skin, and it is all she can do not to run.

"Perhaps not," Azazel muses, still not bothering to look at her. "But it's similar to the difference between murder and manslaughter – regardless of intent, the result is the same. You always do this, Raynare. You reach beyond yourself. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Though I'll admit this is the first time I've seen you manage both at the same time."

When he turns and finally— _finally_ —meets her with his eyes, there is nothing in them at all, and it cuts her half-formed words to shreds.

"In light of your recovery of Twilight Healing, Raynare, and the surrounding events, I have decided it is no longer safe for you to be absent from the Grigori without a strict guard. Your Gear is an asset we cannot afford to lose. I am recalling you and your team, effective immediately."

"Yes, my lord." She chokes the words out.

"That will be all. My congratulations on the successful completion of your original mission."

The illusion shatters, and Azazel vanishes before her eyes.

There's a metaphor in there, somewhere.

* * *

"Hey, kaichou," Saji says, lounging on a couch. Then he must realise to whom he was speaking, because he sits up immediately, his posture almost perfect. "I mean, good afternoon, kaichou!"

Sona smiles faintly. "You can relax, Saji. It's been a long couple of days for all of us."

He nods, but does not slump. It's almost cute how much he wants to impress her. "What brings you here, kaichou?"

"We fought a battle two nights ago," she says. "Some of you killed for the first time. I've been making sure you're all okay – now it's your turn. Would you like to talk about it?"

Saji shrugs. "What's there to talk about? We found the bad guys. We fought the bad guys. I broke someone's neck because he was about to stab me with a lightsaber. Then Hyoudou turned out to be some sort of walking armageddon—to hear Tsubaki-san describe his Sacred Gear—and afterward we all went back to school. Just another Tuesday, really."

His voice is impressively casual.

"Saji," she says, moving around the couch to sit in the chair opposite, "look at me."

"Yes, kaichou?" He can't quite meet her eyes.

"It's okay if you blame me. I was the one who ordered you to fight a battle that only happened because of my own mistakes. It is my fault that you were there, and I will accept the responsibility that holds."

Saji moves so quickly it's like he didn't bother to cross the intervening space. His hands on hers are warm, but pleasantly so.

"B-blame you? I could never! I exist to serve you, kaichou! To give you everything you desire! How could you say something like that?"

Abruptly, he seems to realise where he is—kneeling between Sona's legs, trapping her hands with his own against her thighs—and backs off, a blush blooming on his face like a sunrise. Thankfully, he is looking down and away, and so does not see Sona's own. It's been a long time since anyone except Serafall has been that forward with her.

"I mean—" he begins, before taking a breath and starting over. "What I'm trying to say is that I would never hold you at fault, kaichou. Not for anything, and certainly not for this. I've only been a Devil for a year, but I still know what it means. I'm not human anymore. No – it's more than that. I don't live in the human world anymore. I can't hold myself to the laws and morals I once did; I can only put my faith in you and your decisions."

Saji smiles. It is hesitant and gentle, as if smiling is something he's only just learned to do.

"I trust you, kaichou. If you think we needed to protect a few Fallen Angels, well, I have no reason to hate them. But the bodies of the Devils those priests killed were still there when we arrived, and everything I've heard about that Exorcist makes me wish Hyoudou had punched his head off. I don't know why you say the battle was your fault, but as far as I'm concerned, you made the right choice: we definitely should have been there."

He shrugs, far more casual than his smile.

"I needed to learn what a real fight was like, anyway. You want to make your Rating Games debut soon, and those are to the death, even if it's not _real_ death. What if I flinched away from what I had to do, and we lost because of it? I froze up a few times in that battle; honestly, it was kind of sad. I could have beaten that guy way earlier if I hadn't been so scared of hitting him too hard."

"You don't need to apologise for not being prepared to kill, Saji," Sona says. "You were raised to abhor it."

It's not, exactly, that Sona wasn't either. She isn't itching to grab a dagger and stab anyone who annoys her too much (well, except maybe Serafall, and only because it would just break on her sister's skin). She would be perfectly content to live her life without ever taking another's. Rather, it is simply the reality of the world—and the position—she was born into that a cold war is still a _war_ , and there is a limit to how sheltered a Pillar's heir can truly be.

No – Sona doesn't like killing. It's a senseless waste of potential. Of people.

But the fact she tried to drown Freed Sellzen with a water-dragon three times his size says everything it needs to about whether or not she's _capable_ of it.

"If you say so, kaichou," Saji agrees, too easily. This whole conversation has been too easy. Is this how men deal with their problems? Ignore them in the hopes they go away? Or is Saji—barely a year out from his reincarnation into a Devil—really this unaffected by killing a man with his bare fists?

She's no psychologist, nor is she six hundred years old. Telling how someone truly feels is not one of her specialities. Sure, she's been trained her whole life to spot lies—she's a noble—but not this kind. All she can do is accept his resolve, whether real or fake, and keep an eye on him. The same as she does for all her subordinates, Devil or otherwise.

"I do." Her voice is firm. "You did well, Saji. I am proud of you, and everyone in my Peerage. We drove off the enemy without suffering a single casualty – I could ask for nothing more."

She stands, and rests a hand on his shoulder. "Remember – just because you're my servant doesn't mean you can't ever come to me if you need to, Saji."

He looks up at her, at the hand on his shoulder, and blushes again.

Seriously, what is up with that?

"I will, Kaichou," he says, still blushing, "as long as you always come to me."

"I could not ask for a more faithful servant," Sona replies, and turns to leave. "Remember, we have another meeting tomorrow. The budget still needs to be completed."

Honestly, it's baffling. Sona _literally owns half the school_ – why does managing its finances still take up so much of her time?

* * *

It's a strange life, being Kalawarner. Age beyond measure, beauty beyond compare, skill beyond imagining – and all that does is make her one amongst thousands, a pretty little footsoldier irreplaceable only because she is a pure-blooded Angel—Fallen or not—and there will never be another again. God is dead and we killed Him, indeed. Nobody else who cared had the strength to seal the Beast, and that failure, that burning _inadequacy_ , meant He had to take the task upon Himself, like He always ended up doing.

(It should, perhaps, be noted at this point that yes, Kalawarner is older than Raynare – as an Angel.

She Fell much, much later).

Today finds her lounging on the couch, amusing herself with the actions of a dense, high-school boy and the girls he refuses to recognise. Their troubles are so innocent and unimportant that it's almost relaxing, and she's always appreciated the sort of dry, cynical wit the protagonist and the token ojou-sama seem so fond of. Maybe she should visit the writer in the next few years. Thank him in person and all that.

Kalawarner is so engrossed in the character's antics that she almost misses the moment Raynare walks through the doorway, and it takes her a few seconds to realise her friend isn't just passing through. Raynare stops in front of the television the laptop is hooked up to, and Kalawarner taps the space-bar on her laptop's keyboard to pause the video. She could easily focus on both, but, well, Raynare gets pissy when she's not the centre of attention for whoever she's addressing, and provoking her is just unnecessary. Maybe Mittelt will learn that one day. Probably right after Raynare does.

Kalawarner smiles in quiet amusement. One day she'll resolve their mutual sexual tension, even if she has to invent it first.

"Is something funny, Kalawarner?" Raynare asks. Her voice is cool. It's calm. It's flat.

It sounds nothing like Raynare at all.

"Just idle thoughts," Kalawarner says carefully. "What's up?"

"We have been recalled." The words are clipped, each syllable more stabbed than spoken. "I need you to speak to the Devils; apologise for the short notice, thank them for their cooperation, and make it unequivocally clear that there are no debts between us."

 _Oh, Raynare_ , Kalawarner thinks, _what have you done?_

Out loud, she says something else entirely. "What should I tell them if they ask why we're leaving?"

For a split-second, Raynare's carved-marble smile slips, and there it is: that spark of self-loathing buried so deeply Kalawarner's pretty sure Raynare doesn't even know it exists. It's gone before Kalawarner blinks.

"Remind them—politely—that we are not _yet_ allies, and so our business is still ours alone. If they ask about potential replacements, intimate that our recall was rushed, and state that Lord Azazel has yet to decide on a replacement. Let them speculate on the circumstances all they want."

"And afterward?"

"Make your preparations to return to the Grigori, and instruct Mittelt and Dohnaseek to do the same. We leave as soon as we're ready."

"What about you?" On the surface, it is a subordinate asking a question of her leader. Underneath, it is friend asking a question of a friend. And underneath the underneath—if only Metatron was half as cool as Hatake Kakashi—it is Kalawarner asking Raynare how far she can push.

Angels, after all, are creatures of obsession. They are stable right up to the moment they are not, and then they jump off the edge of Heaven while cursing Michael as a coward and a thief. Or maybe Kalawarner's just projecting. Point is, sometimes you can step in and fix something with a kind word or a verbal spank.

"I have things I must attend to. Alone."

And sometimes you can't.

"Sounds good," Kalawarner says. "Guess I get to do the talking this time. Hooray."

"See that you do," Raynare replies, and leaves the room. Her footsteps, for once, are actually loud enough for Kalawarner to hear; a brief estimation of the time Raynare walks for and, a careful brush of her Light later, Kalawarner judges that Raynare has returned to her room.

So Kalawarner stands, casually, lazily, and slips through the halls of the Church like a shadow. Each step is the sort of silent to make a swooping owl blush, and her Light swirls in strange patterns beneath her skin, until her clothes do not rustle and her breath does not make a sound.

When she arrives outside Raynare's door, she stops, perfectly still, and _listens_.

It has been one thousand, six hundred and thirty-seven years since the last time Kalawarner heard Raynare cry.

It is an ugly sound. Inelegant. Unbefitting of a woman so beautiful, of an Angel so old, of a Fallen so wicked. It would make Dohnaseek frown, and Mittelt smirk, half with scorn and half with glee. Leliel would scoff, Baraqiel would wince, and Kokabiel would laugh.

But they are not here. They do not know. There is only Kalawarner, and she does not speak. Dohnaseek appears briefly, at the other end of the hall, and starts toward her - she looks at him, just _looks_ , and he turns away.

Still Raynare weeps.

Still Kalawarner remains.

An hour passes until Raynare falls silent – until her boots scrape across the floor as she stands and moves from somewhere in the vicinity of the door to somewhere else further in the room. There is a sound much like a soap bubble popping, a flare of light—and Light—beneath the doorframe, and suddenly Kalawarner cannot hear, see, or even feel anything past it.

It is only then that she leaves, walking away with the sort of stealth that makes you wonder if she'd ever actually been there in the first place.

When she passes Mittelt and Dohnaseek, now chatting around the kitchen table, she speaks for the first time since Raynare came to her.

"So," she says, "we've been recalled. I bet Azazel wants a chance to examine Twilight Healing, and we've done everything else we came here to do, so it's time to go. We're to leave as soon as we're ready."

"Naturally." Mittelt sighs. "No doubt she wants to impress him with her punctuality, or some bullshit like that."

Kalawarner shrugs, like she's not sure if it was Azazel's command or just Raynare's interpretation. "Who knows? Best to be safe and hustle anyway."

"I'm fine with that," Dohnaseek says.

Kalawarner and Mittelt look at him.

"Of course you are," they deadpan as one.

"Anyway," Kalawarner continues, "I've got a few things to do before I'm ready, so I'll catch you all later. Raynare's busy, so don't bother her, Mittelt."

"Heaven forbid I interfere with the three hours it takes her to decide how best to straighten her hair."

How did that quote go, again? _Yare yare daze_.

Give her a break, indeed.

"Well, you know what to do," Kalawarner says, waving a casual farewell over her shoulder as she leaves the room. "I'll see you when I get back."

"Sounds good," Mittelt replies, returning the wave. Dohnaseek just nods. She can hear their conversation resume, the sound fading with distance. Oh well. They'll be ready in time anyway; it's not like there's much to do. The Grigori have one permanent settlement, and anywhere else is somewhere they're prepared to cut and run from at a moment's notice.

Kalawarner steps out of the church and into the falling snow. How wonderful. If only this was Japan a thousand years earlier, when she could have flared her Light the whole way to the school and not risked breaking the masquerade, or whatever they called it these days. Sure, the samurai would have tried to kill her instead – but that was fun, and it wasn't like a bunch of tiny mortals with toothpicks were much of a threat to someone like her anyway.

She strolls through the front gate of Kuoh Academy; it's the end of the school day, and the students are flowing out. Six of them walk into their friends when they spot her, and one group stop entirely to gawk in awe. Kalawarner blinks, and looks down.

Yes, she is actually wearing clothes. Then again, they're teenagers. Even the ones that aren't fumbling virgins have never seen a Fallen Angel in all her glory (well, _almost_ all her glory, she just checked to make sure). Gremory and Himejima are beautiful enough to make Kalawarner jealous—and tempted, too—but she suspects even they go around the school in something more than a dress two sizes too small and no stockings.

Hmm. She should try the stockings at some point. Maybe when she visits that writer. See if they'll make him want to mark _his_ Absolute Territory.

She's still smirking at the thought when she runs into Himejima – or, more accurately, Himejima runs into her.

"Why are you here?" Sharp and to the point. The tone is as familiar as the girl looks, but Kalawarner can't quite place either.

"Just wanted to pass a message on to your King, and Sitri if she's around. Won't take too long."

"They are otherwise engaged right now. Tell me, and I'll deal with it."

Well, technically Raynare never specified she _had_ to contact Gremory or Sitri. Just the Devils. And this way will probably be faster.

"Sure," she says, "no skin off my nose. We've been recalled. Terribly sorry about the short notice, but there's nothing we can do about it. Didn't even know it was happening until Raynare told me an hour or so ago, which is when _she_ found out. Lord Azazel hasn't decided who's going to replace us yet, so I can't tell you anything else about that."

Himejima blinks. "What?"

"That was my reaction. Anyway, think that's everything. Thanks for all the help while we were here. Bye!"

Kalawarner turns on her heel, and heads out of the school. Her mission is completed in letter if not in spirit, but that's Himejima's fault. _Otherwise engaged, my perfect ass._ If she wants to be a bitch, she can take the chewing-out she's going to get from her King about not having a chance to interrogate Kalawarner about the message. Like she said, it's no skin off _her_ nose.

She blasts the snow from her body with a sharp flare of Light the moment she enters the church, and heads to her room. It's time to pack. Her journey takes her past Raynare's own, and she knocks on the door.

It opens to reveal Raynare carefully placing a series of books into a bag. Her appearance is flawless, her motions flow with every inch of her usual grace, and her room is spotlessly clean.

"Yes?" Raynare asks. This time, her voice is perfectly pleasant.

"I spoke to the Devils. Didn't have any unexpected issues, so that's all handled."

"Good. I'll see you when I'm done packing, then?"

Kalawarner nods. "Fine by me."

As she walks away and the door closes slowly behind her, she speaks softly, like she's talking to herself. "I didn't know you owned six copies of _Wings of the Pratītyasamutpāda_."

The last thing she hears before the door clicks shut is a sound like splintering glass.

* * *

 **In dread Aus'tra'lia, great Ma'gery lies... doing not much of anything at all, really.**

 **Except, apparently, for this. (It sort of says everything you need to know about me that I wrote nothing over the holidays, and then the second half of the chapter two days into this semester of uni).**

 **Oh, Raynare. You thought this was a pleasant story, but it was I, consequences!**

 **A shout-out to Spectrum for inspiring the scene with Saji and Sona. I don't know if you'll remember, but you made me realise it needed to be written.**

 **Good old Kalawarner. I didn't have much of an idea who she was before this chapter, but now I do.**

 **My apologies for the relative shortness of the chapter; I wanted to get _something_ out to start building up all the momentum I've lost, and this seemed as good a place to leave it as any. **

**Many thanks to my beta, Stone Mason, and to you all for your reviews. As always, I welcome any of your questions, comments, or concerns.**


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